Air pollution

Deadly diseases due to air pollution cut short Indians’ lives by 2.6 years, a recent report by an environment think tank revealed.

As per the report by the environment organisation Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), both indoor and outdoor pollution are proving dangerous, making people vulnerable to fatal diseases.

Air pollution is now the third highest cause of death among all health risks ranking just above smoking in India. This is a combined effect of outdoor particulate matter (PM) 2.5, ozone and household air pollution.

“Due to this combined exposure, South Asians, including Indians are dying early – their life expectancy has reduced by over 2.6 years. This is much higher than the global tally of reduced life expectancy by an average of 20 months. While globally a child born today will die 20 months sooner on an average than would be expected without air pollution in India they would die 2.6 years earlier,” the report released by the CSE said.

Also read: Air Pollution as Bad as Tobacco, Causes Cancer

The household air pollution which contributes about a quarter of the outdoor air pollution in the country is responsible for a loss of nearly one year and two months in life expectancy while outdoor particulate matter (PM) accounts for one year and six months, report revealed.

“Thus, together Indians lose 2.6 years,” it said.

“The deadly tally broken up by diseases shows that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) due to air pollution at 49 per cent is responsible for close to half of deaths, followed by lung cancer deaths at 33 per cent, diabetes and ischaemic heart disease at 22 per cent each and stroke at 15 per cent. It is disturbing how COPD, lung cancer and ischaemic heart disease dominate the dubious tally,” it said.

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