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posted by martyb on Saturday October 21 2017, @07:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-gonna-stay-in-my-basement dept.

A Lancet Commission report has found that pollution is now the leading cause of disease and death worldwide:

Exposure to polluted air, water and soil caused nine million premature deaths in 2015, according to a report published Thursday in The Lancet.

The causes of death vary — cancer, lung disease, heart disease. The report links them to pollution, drawing upon previous studies that show how pollution is tied to a wider range of diseases than previously thought.

Those studies observed populations exposed to pollutants and compared them to people not exposed. The studies have shown that pollution can be an important cause of diseases — many of them potentially fatal — including asthma, cancer, neurodevelopmental disorders, birth defects in children, heart disease, stroke and lung disease.

The nine million figure adds up to 16 percent of all deaths worldwide, killing three times more people than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Pollution is responsible for 15 times more deaths than wars and all other forms of violence. "No country is unaffected," the report notes. But 92 percent of those deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries.

Air pollution deaths in Southeast Asia are expected to double by 2050.

The Lancet Commission on pollution and health (DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32345-0) (DX)

Also at The Guardian and Human Rights Watch.

Related: Pollution responsible for quarter of deaths of young children, says WHO


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  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday October 22 2017, @05:50AM (1 child)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday October 22 2017, @05:50AM (#585878) Homepage

    They will do everything they can to place the burden of proof upon everybody they can except for themselves.

    They preach diversity, but hire 75% Whites and 25% Asians and the vast majority of those combined are males. But that's a risk they are willing to take, because if they actually practiced what the preached (hiring more Black engineers, for example,) , their narrative would fall apart like a house of cards, as Hollywood's did when they were exposed for being nothing but a bunch of two-bit hypocrites with endemic rape culture.

    It's called "being a house of cards." And all of those self-righteous windbags, whether they be Silicon Valley Executives or the Democratic Party, are all built upon a house of cards which will collapse with a gust of breath.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:11PM (#586036)

    Oh come on, is affirmative action destroying meritocracy or is it just a vast conspiracy that doesn't matter to upstanding white folks?

    Come on asshole, try to at least be consistent. Of all the people on here you are the last to be making house of cards accusations.