Lancet’s study finds Pollution kills more than wars

Environmental pollution — from filthy air to contaminated water — is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.

One out of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015 — about 9 million — could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure, according to a major study released Thursday in the Lancet medical journal. The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report says, costing some $4.6 trillion in annual losses — or about 6.2 percent of the global economy.

The commission is a pollution research effort uniting Lancet, the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution and the Icahn School of Medicine in New York.

The deaths from illnesses and diseases linked to the pollutants are considered premature, the report says, because they would otherwise not have occurred without exposure to the various forms of pollution.

"Nearly 92 per cent of pollution-related deaths occur in low-income and middle-income countries and, in countries at every income level, disease caused by pollution is most prevalent among minorities and the marginalized," the study said.

India, many countries in Africa and some South American countries have been hit particularly hard, said Bruce Lanphear, a health-sciences professor at Simon Fraser University, one of 40 commissioners involved in the two-year research project.

"This is the first global estimate of the total burden of disease due to pollution, and we're not just talking about air pollution," Mr. Lanphear said.

The research also says pollution-related diseases are annually responsible for $4.6-trillion (U.S.) in "welfare losses," defined as economic costs beyond disease and treatment such as loss of productivity. Pollution, says the research, is also responsible for 1.7 per cent of annual health-care spending in high-income countries.

Over all, the Lancet study calls for measures to quantify and then curb pollution, which it describes as an "unintended consequence of unhealthy and unsustainable development."

"If we want to substantially reduce the global environmental burden of disease, we need to act further upstream and address the drivers and sources of pollution to ensure that development policies and investments are healthy and sustainable by design."

Pollution, say the authors, can "no longer be viewed as an isolated environmental issue, but is a transcendent problem that affects the health and well-being of entire societies."