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The agency called for urgent action to address one of the greatest environmental threats to human health. Southeast Asia is the most affected region.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has strengthened its Air Quality Guidelines (AQG) because it warns that air pollution is one of the greatest environmental threats to human health, causing 7 million premature deaths each year.
The United Nations health agency said on Wednesday that urgent action is needed to reduce exposure to air pollution and that its burden of disease “compared to other major global health risks such as unhealthy diets and smoking.”
According to the WHO, the burden of disease caused by air pollution is
“WHO has lowered almost all air quality guidelines levels and warned that exceeding the new… levels will pose significant health risks,” it said. “Stick to them can save millions of lives.”
The new guidelines are designed to protect people from the adverse effects of air pollution and are used by the government as a reference for legally binding standards.
The last time WHO issued AQG was in 2005, which has had a significant impact on global pollution reduction policies.
However, the WHO stated that in the next 16 years, stronger evidence has emerged of how air pollution can affect health at lower levels than previously understood.
The organization said: “The accumulated evidence is sufficient to justify actions to reduce population exposure to major air pollutants, not only in specific countries or regions, but also on a global scale.”
Southeast Asia is hardest hit
The new WHO guidelines include recommendations for air quality levels for six pollutants, including ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide.
The other two are PM10 and PM2.5-particles equal to or less than 10 and 2.5 microns in diameter.
The World Health Organization says that both can penetrate deep into the lungs, but studies have shown that PM2.5 can even enter the bloodstream, causing cardiovascular and respiratory problems, but it also affects other organs.
In response, the PM2.5 guideline level has been halved.
In 2019, more than 90% of the world’s population lived in areas where the long-term exposure to PM2.5 exceeded the 2005 AQG. Southeast Asia is the most severely affected region.
The new guidelines were released a few weeks before the COP26 Global Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, from October 31st to November 12th.
The WHO stated that along with climate change, air pollution is one of the main environmental threats to human health. It added that improving air quality will strengthen efforts to mitigate climate change and vice versa.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “Air pollution poses a threat to the health of all countries, but it hits people in low- and middle-income countries the most.”
The WHO stated that although the air quality in high-income countries has improved significantly since the 1990s, the number of deaths and years of healthy life lost in the world has hardly declined because the air quality in most other countries has generally deteriorated, which is in line with their economic growth. Consistent. develop.
The WHO stated: “It is estimated that exposure to air pollution will cause 7 million premature deaths each year and cause millions of loss of healthy lifespan.”
In children, this may include decreased lung growth and function, respiratory infections, and worsening asthma.
In adults, ischemic heart disease (also known as coronary heart disease) and stroke are the most common causes of premature death from outdoor air pollution.
The organization said that evidence of other effects is also emerging, such as diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases.
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