One of every six deaths due to pollution

Dirty air in India and China. Contaminated water in sub-Saharan Africa. Toxic mines and chemical pollution in South America. Pollution worldwide is responsible for 9 million deaths per year, or about one in six, according to a new study published in the prestigious scientific journal Lancet.

If the figures are correct, this means that pollution kills three times more people each year than killers such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, with most of the deaths occur in poor and developing countries.

"We really had no idea of ​​the scale of mortality caused by pollution," explains Philip Landrigan, one of the scientists come out with the report. It is the end result of two years of efforts that have been made by the team to analyze data from more than 130 countries worldwide. They took into account contamination from mercury, arsenic and polluted by fossil fuels burned air.

Source: www.euroscientist.com , www.pixabay.com