The research will likely amplify calls to rapidly transition off of oil, gas and coal for reasons beyond curbing climate change.
By Alexander C. Kaufman, HuffPost US
Air pollution from burning fossil fuels caused 1 in 5 deaths worldwide in 2018, killing more than 8 million people, according to Harvard University research published Tuesday.
The finding, based on new models that use atmospheric chemistry, significantly increased the previous estimates for deaths linked to tiny particles of burned carbon that lodge in soft lung tissue and cause respiratory diseases, trigger asthma attacks, and cloud cities with smog.
The most recent prior estimate from the world’s largest and most comprehensive study of global deaths, known as the Global Burden of Disease Study, pegged the total lives lost to outdoor airborne particulate matter ― which includes not only fossil fuel pollution but also dust, wildfire smoke and burning crop fields ― at 4.2 million per year.
But the new research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research, shows nearly double that total from fossil fuel pollution alone, with the highest concentrations of fossil fuel-related deaths in regions with some of the most populous cities, where combustion-engine automobiles, fuel-heated buildings and sprawling power plants abound. Those regions include eastern North America, Europe and Southeast Asia.
“Our study adds to the mounting evidence that air pollution from ongoing dependence on fossil fuels is detrimental to global health,” Eloise Marais, an associate professor at University College London and a co-author of the research, said in a statement. “We can’t in good conscience continue to rely on fossil fuels when we know that there are such severe effects on health and viable, cleaner alternatives.”
It comes at a moment when the effects of air pollution are facing new scientific and legal scrutiny. In December, a landmark ruling in the United Kingdom found air pollution was to blame for a 9-year-old girl’s fatal asthma attack. The research is also likely to draw blowback from an increasingly organized effort on the political right, particularly in the U.S., to downplay the effects of air pollution. The Trump administration, which had been advised by industry allies who previously worked to undermine climate science and seed doubt over the effects of smoking cigarettes on lung cancer, worked to weaken federal research and regulatory authority on air pollution.
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