Mortality from ambient air pollution.WHO

Mortality from ambient air pollution. WHO

Situation and trends

In the year 2012, ambient air pollution was responsible for 3.7 million deaths, representing 6.7% of the total deaths. Worldwide, ambient air pollution is estimated to cause about 16% of the lung cancer deaths, 11% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) deaths, more than 20% of ischaemic heart disease and stroke, and about 13% of respiratory infection deaths.

Particulate matter pollution is an environmental health problem that affects people worldwide, but low- and middle-income countries disproportionately experience this burden.


Burden of disease from Ambient Air Pollution for 2012. WHO

Summary of results

Globally, 3.7 million deaths were attributable to ambient air pollution (AAP) in 2012.
About 88% of these deaths occur in low and middle income (LMI) countries, which represent 82% of the world population.

The Western Pacific and South East Asian regions bear most of the burden with 1.67 million and 936’000 deaths, respectively.

About 236’000 deaths occur in the Eastern Mediterranean region, 200’000 in Europe, 176’000 in Africa, and 58’000 in the Americas. The remaining deaths occur in high
income countries of Europe (280’000), Americas (94’000), Western Pacific (67’000),
and Eastern Mediterranean (14’000).

The large increase in burden compared with the previous estimate of 1.3 million deaths from AAP from 2008 1 is due to

1)additional evidence that has become available on the relationship between exposure and health outcomes and the use of integrated exposure response functions 2;

2)an increase in non communicable diseases;

3) the inclusion of the rural population, whereas the previous estimate only covered the urban population; and

4) the use of a lower counterfactual, i.e. the baseline exposure against which
the effect of air pollution is measured 3.