Indoor and outdoor air pollution led to 1.23 lakh deaths in Bangladesh in 2017, according to a new study on global air pollution. It says the life of a South Asian child will be shortened on average by 30 months as they grow up in current high levels of air pollution.

The State of Global Air 2019, which used data from the period 1990 to 2017, observed that life expectancy in Bangladesh would have seen the highest expected gain of nearly 1.3 years if air pollution levels met the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.

The report, released on Wednesday by US-based organisations Health Effects Institute and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said South Asia was the most polluted area in the world.

Air quality in Asia remained stubbornly poor, especially in Bangladesh the entire population has remained exposed to PM2.5 levels above 35 microgram per cubic meter (µg/m3) since 1990, said the third annual State of Global Air report.

The major sources of pollution, as per the study, are household solid fuels, dust from construction, coal power plants, brick production, transportation and diesel-powered equipment, among others.

There are many diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, which have direct and indirect links with air pollution. So it is natural that some people die from air pollution and the life expectancy decreases also.

In 2017, air pollution was the fifth highest mortality risk factor globally and was associated with about 4.9 million deaths and loss of 147 million years of healthy life, the report added. In that year, annual PM2.5 exposures were highest in South Asia, with Nepal at 100 μg/m3, India 91μg/m3, Bangladesh 61 μg/m3, and Pakistan 58 μg/m3.

The study found that 3.6 billion people (47% of the global population) were exposed to household air pollution from the use of solid fuels for cooking in 2017. These exposures were most common in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and East Asia.

Long-term exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution contributed to nearly five million deaths from stroke, diabetes, heart attack, lung cancer and chronic lung disease in 2017.

Building on a fundamental understanding of how air pollution affects health, researchers quantify the burden of disease from air pollution by calculating how air pollution exposures translate into numbers of deaths and years lived with disease or disability.

Source: The Daily Star