Cutting Emissions Could Prevent Thousands of Deaths Linked to Polluted Air

From vehicle exhaust to manufacturing plumes, nearly every person in the world breathes in unhealthy air on a daily basis. The impact is deadly: air pollution is responsible for 7 million premature deaths around the world per year according to the World Health Organization (WHO), making it the second leading risk factor for death behind high blood pressure. 

But that number could be significantly cut, researchers say, if we reduce greenhouse gases and air pollutants.

A new study published in the journal Earth’s Future on May 6 found that up to 250,000 deaths from poor air quality in central and western Europe alone could be prevented by 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced.

The researchers, from the University of Leeds in England, looked at the health impacts in Europe in 2014 and 2050 from exposure to two types of pollution. The first is fine particulate matter, which can penetrate deep into the lungs and pose the greatest health risks. This pollution comes from sources such as wildfires or construction sites. The other is surface level ozone, which forms when sunlight interacts with certain pollutants like nitrogen oxides, and is the result of things like vehicle exhaust and factory emissions. Exposure to these air pollutants can lead to long-term health complications, including stroke, heart disease, and pneumonia.

Read more: Less Than 1% of Earth Has Safe Levels of Air Pollution, Study Finds

The team examined three scenarios in which policymakers took low, medium, and high levels of action to combat climate change, and created an atmospheric chemistry model to simulate the possible air quality in 2050.

The researchers defined a high level of action as being one where emissions from the housing, industry, transport, and agricultural sectors are cut for 70% of the population of Western and Central Europe to below the WHO’s air quality guideline for annual fine particulate matter. Doing so, they found, would improve air quality across the continent and lead to large reductions in mortality overall.

And it could help tackle health inequities. Globally, poorer communities are more likely to be exposed to unhealthy air quality when compared with higher-income areas. Researchers found that disadvantaged regions of Europe currently have proportionally higher death rates compared to higher-income regions. Their findings show that a significant reduction in emissions—seen in the high action scenario—would help reduce that inequality. But under the medium and low impact scenarios health impacts would worsen, highlighting the necessity of aggressive climate mitigation practices. 

Air pollution in Europe has been on the decline for the last two decades, as the E.U. has adopted more comprehensive clean air policies, however more work remains to be done. There are still regions across the E.U. that have pollutant concentrations that exceed the bloc’s current standards. The researchers hope that their findings might encourage policymakers to consider not just the health impacts of air pollution, but also how emissions reduction solutions can help marginalized communities who are disproportionately impacted.

“The strategies that policymakers take to mitigate climate change will have considerable implications for human exposure to air quality, not least of which are the number of deaths,” lead author Connor Clayton, a PhD student in the School of Earth and Environment and the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at Leeds University, said in a press release. 

“But they also urgently need to consider the persistent inequity of exposure between wealthier and more deprived populations which continues to be an issue even though air pollution has reduced across Europe.”