The Deadly Cost of Dirty Air
125 images Created 4 Feb 2021
Global Story on Air pollution shot in Mongolia, India, Indonesia, Iran, France and Spain.
Air Pollution accounts for seven million premature deaths a year and can be harmful even at low levels. But it’s a problem we can solve
Text from © Beth Gardiner.
"When Covid-19 began tearing around the globe, Francesca Dominici suspected air pollution was increasing the death toll. It was the logical conclusion of everything scientists knew about dirty air and everything they were learning about the novel coronavirus. People in polluted places are more likely to have chronic illnesses, and such patients are the most vulnerable to COVID-19. What’s more, air pollution can weaken the immune system and inflame the airways, leaving the body less able to fight off a respiratory virus.
Many experts saw the possible connection, but Dominici, a biostatistics professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was uniquely equipped to test it. She and her colleagues have spent years creating an extraordinary data platform, one that aligns information on the health of tens of millions of Americans with a day-by-day summary of the air they’ve been breathing since 2000. Dominici explained it to me last summer on a video call from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her pandemic puppy, a black Lab, squirmed on her lap. In London, where I sat in my home office, the brief respite in traffic provided by the initial lockdown had ended, and diesel fumes once again clouded the air."
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Focus on Mongolia:
Kids suffer most in one of Earth's most polluted cities. In winter, coal stoves and power plants choke Mongolia's capital, Ulaanbaatar, with smoke - and lung disease.
Air pollution in a global phenomenon. 91% of the world’s population lives in places where air quality exceeds the World Health Organization guideline limits (WHO).
WHO estimates that around 7 million people die every year from exposure to fine particles (Pm 2.5) in polluted air that lead to diseases such as stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and respiratory infections, including pneumonia. Worldwide more deaths per year are linked to air pollution than to automobile accidents.
In the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator, the combination of climate change, an increasing population, limited infrastructure and heavy dependence on coal has created one of the worst cases of air pollution in the world.
Images and Videos here:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/mongolia-air-pollution/
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17842403014494815/?hl=en
Air Pollution accounts for seven million premature deaths a year and can be harmful even at low levels. But it’s a problem we can solve
Text from © Beth Gardiner.
"When Covid-19 began tearing around the globe, Francesca Dominici suspected air pollution was increasing the death toll. It was the logical conclusion of everything scientists knew about dirty air and everything they were learning about the novel coronavirus. People in polluted places are more likely to have chronic illnesses, and such patients are the most vulnerable to COVID-19. What’s more, air pollution can weaken the immune system and inflame the airways, leaving the body less able to fight off a respiratory virus.
Many experts saw the possible connection, but Dominici, a biostatistics professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was uniquely equipped to test it. She and her colleagues have spent years creating an extraordinary data platform, one that aligns information on the health of tens of millions of Americans with a day-by-day summary of the air they’ve been breathing since 2000. Dominici explained it to me last summer on a video call from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her pandemic puppy, a black Lab, squirmed on her lap. In London, where I sat in my home office, the brief respite in traffic provided by the initial lockdown had ended, and diesel fumes once again clouded the air."
_____________
Focus on Mongolia:
Kids suffer most in one of Earth's most polluted cities. In winter, coal stoves and power plants choke Mongolia's capital, Ulaanbaatar, with smoke - and lung disease.
Air pollution in a global phenomenon. 91% of the world’s population lives in places where air quality exceeds the World Health Organization guideline limits (WHO).
WHO estimates that around 7 million people die every year from exposure to fine particles (Pm 2.5) in polluted air that lead to diseases such as stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and respiratory infections, including pneumonia. Worldwide more deaths per year are linked to air pollution than to automobile accidents.
In the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator, the combination of climate change, an increasing population, limited infrastructure and heavy dependence on coal has created one of the worst cases of air pollution in the world.
Images and Videos here:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/mongolia-air-pollution/
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17842403014494815/?hl=en
