Air pollution and climate change are having a serious impact on global health. Nearly one quarter of all global deaths are a result of the environment, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2016 report Preventing Disease Through Healthy Environments: A Global Assessment of the Burden of Disease from Environmental Risks. One of the greatest environmental threats to human health is air pollution.

 

Many low- and middle-income countries do not monitor air quality, and either lack effective emission control legislation or simply fail to enforce legislation. As a result, their populations face a disproportionate disease burden. In addition to outdoor exposure to air pollution, WHO estimated in 2016 that almost 3 billion people around the world were still burning biomass fuel and coal indoors, in order to cook or to heat their homes, which resulted in more than 4 million deaths annually.

 

In 2018, WHO estimated that more than 80% of people living in urban areas (that monitor air pollution) are exposed to air quality levels that exceed the organization’s limits - and that 97% of cities in low- and middle-income countries with more than 100,000 inhabitants do not meet WHO air quality guidelines (the figure falls to 49% for high-income countries).