Report: Pollution Kills 3 Times More than AIDS, TB And Malaria Combined

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/19/558821792/report-pollution-kills-3-times-more-than-aids-tb-and-malaria-combined

October 19, 20176:30 PM ET
Susan Brink

Exposure to polluted air, water and soil caused nine million premature deaths in 2015, according to a report published Thursday in The Lancet.

The causes of death vary — cancer, lung disease, heart disease. The report links them to pollution, drawing upon previous studies that show how pollution is tied to a wider range of diseases than previously thought.

Those studies observed populations exposed to pollutants and compared them to people not exposed. The studies have shown that pollution can be an important cause of diseases — many of them potentially fatal — including asthma, cancer, neurodevelopmental disorders, birth defects in children, heart disease, stroke and lung disease.

The nine million figure adds up to 16 percent of all deaths worldwide, killing three times more people than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Pollution is responsible for 15 times more deaths than wars and all other forms of violence.

"No country is unaffected," the report notes. But 92 percent of those deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries.

"Pollution in rapidly developing countries is just getting worse and worse and worse.

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Rates of heart disease and stroke are kicked up by air pollution. [Inhaled nanoparticles of pollution can play a role in rupturing plaque build-up in arteries, causing a heart attack or stroke, according to the American Heart Association.]

Arsenic in the water increases rates of some cancers, but the connection isn't immediate. When debates arise about controlling pollution, industry almost always says it's too expensive to make changes. Industries can make that statement because they can calculate how much it costs, say, to put filters on smokestacks. The health costs to people over many years of exposure to pollution is less obvious.

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One blatant example is asbestos. About two million tons of new asbestos is produced every year. [Asbestos is outlawed in most of the developed world because of the high risk of lung cancer.] Virtually all of that goes to the world's poorest countries that have poor or no regulations against it. [According to reports it is used in the production of building materials, among other products.] It's going to continue to cause epidemics of cancer in poor counties. Another example is pesticides. About 20 percent of U.S. pesticide production is of pesticides not allowed in this country because of known health risks. So we export it to poor countries.

Then there is the international transfer of materials like old computers, cell phones, TVs, refrigerators from rich countries to the developing world. People break them up and try to extract valuable things like gold or copper, and pollutants get into the soil. Or lead batteries end up in developing countries and contaminate communities.

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