If the world were to permanently reduce these pollutants to meet the World Health Organization's (WHO) guideline limit, the average person would add 2.3 years onto his or her life expectancy, according to the data, which has a 2021 cutoff.
Fine particulate matter is linked to lung disease, heart disease, strokes and cancer.
Tobacco use, by comparison, reduces global life expectancy by 2.2 years while child and maternal malnutrition is responsible for a reduction of 1.6 years.
Asia and Africa bear the greatest burden yet have some of the weakest infrastructure to deliver citizens timely, accurate data. They also receive tiny slices of an already small global philanthropic pie.
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Globally, South Asia is the worst impacted region. Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan are in order the top four most polluted countries in terms of annualized, population-weighted averages of fine particulate matter, which are detected by satellites and defined as particles with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less (PM2.5).
From the article:
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