Nine million people died prematurely in 2015 because of air, water and soil pollution — three times the number that died of tuberculosis, AIDS and malaria combined, says a study published in The Lancet. The exact cause of death ranged from lung cancer to heart disease, but the total amounted to 16 percent of all deaths globally.
“Pollution is responsible for 15 times more deaths than wars and all other forms of violence,” says NPR, adding that the vast majority of those pollution-caused deaths — 92 percent —occurred in low- and middle-income countries.
“Pollution in rapidly developing countries is just getting worse and worse and worse. And it isn’t getting the attention it deserves. It needs to be rigorously studied,” says Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and professor of environmental medicine and global health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and one of the study’s authors.
Landrigan explained that even seemingly unrelated issues like heart disease can be exacerbated by air with high amounts of particulate matter, which can rupture plaque that has built up in the arteries, causing a heart attack or stroke.