The authors of the study published in Cardiovascular Research (Oxford) did not choose their words at random. While the epidemics linked to Covid-19 raise fears of a possible pandemic, this team of researchers affirm that there is indeed an already existing pandemic, one of the most important in the history of humanity, (that one should not be forgotten in the current context): pollution.
These scientists have developed their own atmospheric modeling methodology, called Global Exposure Mortality Model (GEMM). In summary, this model combines all the impacts of pollution identified by other studies, and then incorporates them into the causes and death rates worldwide.
The goal is to determine the impact of air pollution on life expectancy in each region and each country. The team’s conclusions are quite striking. They immediately bring a high figure: no less than 8.8 million premature deaths are caused each year by air pollution.
Is there an air pollution pandemic
The researchers believe their results highlight the existence of a pandemic caused by air pollution. This claim is based on their model integrating pollution among the multiple sources of death. They point out that smoking kills 7.7 million people every year, that the AIDS virus causes 700,000 deaths a year, and that different forms of violence like wars are responsible for more than 500,000 deaths. In the face of such figures, which are already alarming in themselves, that of pollution at 8.8 million premature deaths appears to be just as serious.
Since the impact of air pollution on public health is wider than expected, and that it is a global phenomenon, they believe that their results show that there is a air pollution pandemic’ according to the conclusion of their study.
It would therefore seem that they justify this choice of word by the global scale of the phenomenon and its dangerousness, and it turns out that the difference between epidemic and pandemic rests especially in the magnitude of the number of cases, causing difficult control and, therefore, greater virulence.
On the other hand, it will be noted that the use of the word for the effects of air pollution does not meet the concept of contagiousness, but all definitions of pandemic do not necessarily include this criterion as a sine qua non condition of phenomenon.
Life expectancy is reduced by 3 years
Asia is unsurprisingly, the region of the world where the share of mortality due to pollution is the most notable. In India for example, fine particles are responsible for an 8.5-year reduction in life expectancy when, in China, it is 4.1 years.
Although western Europe and the Americas are less affected, life expectancy worldwide is still reduced by 3 years on average. The researchers also looked into different aspects of the impacts of air pollution. For example, it is people over the age of 60 who are most affected by this mortality impact. It is also cardiovascular diseases that cause the most deaths due to pollution.
The researchers indicate in their paper that they have taken care to distinguish anthropogenic sources (from human causes) and natural sources of pollution, in order to identify what can and cannot be acted upon. The way the researchers describe the result of this distinction is sharp, as they show that around two thirds of premature deaths are attributable to air pollution from human sources, mainly due to the use of fossil fuels; this figure reaches 80% in high-income countries.
Five and a half million deaths a year worldwide are potentially preventable. The message of their study is to alert public policy makers that air pollution must be integrated with other risk factors, and more particularly those which affect the heart, in the same way as smoking or diabetes.
According to the estimates of these researchers, and somewhat as if they evoked a cure for a disease, the elimination of emissions from fossil combustion would increase human life expectancy by a year, or even two if all the emissions were stopped. At least better waste management methods could help us go in the right direction.