The World Health Organization on Wednesday set more stringent limits for major air pollutants, including airborne particles, which kill seven million premature deaths each year, especially in poor countries.
This is the first time that the WHO has updated its global air quality guidelines since 2005. The amount of data showing that air pollution affects different aspects of health has increased significantly since then. dated.
This is why the WHO has lowered almost all of its reference thresholds, which mainly relate to so-called classic pollutants: suspended particles, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide. carbon.
The new guidelines are not legally binding standards, but they provide a framework for countries to better protect their populations.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged “all countries and all those struggling to protect our environment to use them to reduce suffering and save lives”.
Because no less than seven million premature deaths, mainly due to non-communicable diseases, are attributable to the joint effects of ambient air pollution and indoor air pollution, according to the WHO.
One of the main environmental threats
“Air pollution is a threat to health in all countries, but it mostly hits people in low- and middle-income countries,” Dr Tedros pointed out, as disadvantaged countries face increasing levels. air pollution, boosted by large-scale urbanization and economic development that relies primarily on the use of fossil fuels.
For Dr Hans Henri Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, “clean air should be a fundamental human right and a necessary condition for the health and productivity of societies”.
“However, although air quality has improved somewhat over the past three decades, millions of people continue to die prematurely, often in the most vulnerable and marginalized populations,” he noted in the press release.
Along with climate change, air pollution is, according to the WHO, one of the main environmental threats to health.
In children, air pollution could hinder lung development, limit lung function, cause respiratory infections and worsen asthma. In adults, ischemic heart disease and stroke are the most common causes of premature death from outdoor air pollution.
New data, says the WHO, shows that outdoor air pollution can also be the cause of diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases.
90% of the population concerned
In terms of disease burden, air pollution is therefore comparable according to the WHO to other important risk factors for health, such as unhealthy diet and smoking.
However, in 2019, more than 90% of the world’s population lived in regions where concentrations exceeded the reference thresholds set by the WHO in 2005 for prolonged exposure to fine particles PM2.5 (diameter is less than 2 , 5 micrometers). WHO has also halved their reference threshold.
In 2019, the annual population-weighted PM2.5 concentrations were highest in the Southeast Asia region and the Eastern Mediterranean region.
These particles can penetrate deep into the lungs (just like PM10), but also into the bloodstream. Fine particles mainly come from the combustion of fuel in various sectors, including transport, energy and industry and agriculture.
In enclosed spaces, the use of solid fuels and kerosene in unventilated stoves and stoves, the burning of tobacco and combustion for other purposes, are other important factors of air pollution.
Watch video
Reference-feedproxy.google.com