Bangladesh ranks 5th in terms of deaths due to air pollution

Air pollution caused 1.23 premature deaths in Bangladesh only in a single year of 2017, said a new study on global air pollution.

Two US based institutes Health Effects Institute (HEI) and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) on Wednesday released a detailed report on quality of the global air with title, “State of Global Air-2019”.

Overall, ten countries with the highest mortality burden attributable to air pollution in 2017 were China (1.2 million), India (1.2 million), Pakistan (128,000), Indonesia (124,000), Bangladesh (123,000), Nigeria (114,000), the United States (108,000), Russia (99,000), Brazil (66,000), and the Philippines (64,000), the report states.

Report indicates that India and China are collectively accounted for more than fifty percent of global 5 million deaths due to air pollution. 

State of Global Air 2019 report also said that in 2017, exposure to PM 2.5 pollution was found to be the third leading risk factor globally for Type 2 diabetes.

In 2017, annual PM2.5 exposures were highest in South Asia, where Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan had the highest exposures.

Bhutan’s exposure level was the lowest in the region but was still above WHO’s first interim target.

The 10 countries with the lowest national PM2.5 exposure levels were the Maldives, United States, Norway, Estonia, Iceland, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Brunei, and Finland.

Source: dailysun