Air pollution due to power plants, vehicles and other fine dust sources, for which the burning of fossil energy carrier alone, the mortality risk increased significantly stronger than previously thought. In 2012 alone, the displeased air led to 10.2 million early death, according to a new study. So far, experts had expected that fine dust from fossil fuels worldwide costs 8.8 million people prematurely worldwide.
This value was achieved according to scientists of the Universities Harvard, Birmingham, Leicester and University College in London for climate protection only in 2018. The team gives the number of hired dead for this year in the journal now Environmental Research published analysis at 8.7 million. The number of victims overlooks those of all people who die worldwide worldwide by smoking tobacco and malaria.
Many dead in China and India
Researchers refer to regions with a high proportion of fine dust from fossil fuels, in particular to China with 3.9 million prematurely died, India with 2.5 million and parts of the Eastern USA, Europe and Sudostasia. By 2018, the number in China had fallen to 2.4 million after the country has reduced the outset of exhaust gases in the meantime by 43.7 percent. Also three years ago, air pollution in the US and Europe was still responsible for ten percent of the death trap.
For early risk assessments, the health response to fine dust (PM2.5) was in the foreground, the consequences of fossil fuels were usually not studied alone. For the new study, the authors have now used a special concentration-effect function and incorporated in a meta-analysis of previous findings and data both at high and low particulate matter concentrations. Instead of relying only on average estimates from satellite and surface observations, the researchers used a global 3D model of NASA atmosphere with a more detailed resolution.
5.5 million people had to die from air pollution worldwide per year, researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemie in Mainz (MPI) had attributed in 2019. As a prerequisite, they called that humanity completely renounce fossil fuels, only put on renewable energies and also had to avoid other human emissions. In 2015, according to another study, about 13 were about 13.000 Refrigerant death trap on particulate matter and ozone only from the traffic area.