More than 500,000 people killed due to toxic air in EU in 2021, shows data

More than half a million people were killed due to dirty air in the European Union in 2021, as per estimates, and around half of the deaths may have been avoided by decreasing pollution to the limits recommended by doctors.

The European Environment Agency's researchers attributed 253,000 early deaths to concentrations of fine particles called PM2.5 which breached the maximum guideline limits of the World Health Organization, set at 5µg/m3.

Meanwhile, more than 52,000 deaths were caused by excessive levels of nitrogen dioxide and 22,000 deaths took place due to short-term exposure to increasing levels of ozone.

“The figures released today by the EEA remind us that air pollution is still the number one environmental health problem in the EU,” said Virginijus Sinkevičius, the EU’s environment commissioner, reported The Guardian.

Doctors said that air pollution is among the major reasons for killing of humans, however there will be a quick drop in death tolls if the economies are cleaned up by the countries.

Between 2005 and 2021, the number of deaths caused by PM2.5 declined by 41 per cent in the EU and the EU is aiming to meet a target of 55 per cent by the end of the decade.

The WHO, which tightened the guidelines for air quality in 2021, stated that it is not possible to consider any level of air pollution as safe but added that they have established upper limits for certain pollutants.

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In September, the European Parliament voted to align the air quality rules of the EU with the WHO's, however, decided to delay doing so until 2035.

“The good news is that clean air policy works, and our air quality is improving. But we need to do better still, and bring pollution levels down further,” said Sinkevicius.

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The EEA for the first time estimated the full burden of disease from air pollution. The researchers, while observing the raw death tolls, worked out how many more years the population would be living along with the diseases brought on by polluted air.

“When people get lung cancer, normally they die very quickly. For other diseases – especially asthma but also diabetes or also chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – there is also an important contribution of this state of living with disability,” said Alberto Gonzalez Ortiz, an EEA air pollution researcher.

“People can live for a long period in a bad condition. Considering only mortality, we were underestimating the impact of air pollution,” he added.

(With inputs from agencies)