FNs Sundhedsorganisation (WHO) siger den især er gal i store dele af Asien og Afrika, hvor alt fra afbrænding af giftigt affald til sundhedsfarlige komfurer påvirker helbredet kraftigt og koster milioner af menneskeliv hvert år – eller et kortere og dårligere liv.
PARIS, 8 April 2013 (UN News Service): The dangers posed by air pollution are far larger than previously thought, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has announced, as it renewed its call for rapid global action in reducing what it described as one of “the greatest hazards to human health.”
The warning came at the latest meeting of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), held in Paris, France, over the weekend.
Here, health advocates were told that indoor air pollution had become the leading risk factor for “burden of disease” in South Asia while it was ranked second in Eastern, Central and Western Sub-Saharan Africa and third in Southeast Asia.
“The estimations we have now tell us there are 3,5 million premature deaths every year caused by household air pollution, and 3,3 million death every year caused by outdoor air pollution,” Dr. Maria Neira, the WHO’s Director of Public Health and Environment, told the CCAC meeting.
Ground-level ozone pollution was estimated to cause an additionally 200.000 premature deaths every year, the agency said, and noted that “burden of disease” is a calculation based on years of life lost combined with years lived at less than full health.
“Air pollution is becoming one of the biggest health issues we have in front of us at the moment,” Dr. Neira said.
The CCAC, whose partners include Member States and civil society health advocates, targets so-called short-lived climate pollutants, or SLCPs, as major culprits (synder) in the damage to health, as well as the cause of crop loss and climate change.
SLCPs that are harmful to human health are released through numerous sources ranging from diesel engine exhaust and smoke and soot (sod) from inefficient cook stoves (komfurer) to leakage and flaring from oil and natural gas production and emissions (udledninger) from solid waste disposal (affald).
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