86% of Canadians live in areas with air pollution exceeding WHO guidelines: researchers

Most Canadians live in areas with levels of fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide higher than new air quality guidelines issued by the World Health Organization.

The majority of Canadians live in parts of the country where air pollution exceeds new guidelines set by the World Health Organization, and this could damage their health, researchers say.

According to researchers at CANUE – the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium – around 86 per cent of Canadians live in areas where airborne fine particulate matter levels exceed the WHO guidelines that were issued in late September.

Around 56 per cent of people live in areas where the levels of nitrogen dioxide exceed the new guidelines, said Jeff Brook, an assistant professor in public health and chemical engineering and applied chemistry at the University of Toronto who works with CANUE.

The WHO’s new guidelines recommend an annual average concentration of PM2.5 of five micrograms per cubic meter of air. PM2.5 refers to airborne particles so tiny that they can penetrate the lungs when you breathe and enter the bloodstream.

While most of Canada was well under the old WHO guideline on fine particulate matter, much of urban Canada exceeds this new benchmark, as do parts of Western Canada with regular exposure to wildfire smoke, CANUE’s research shows.

“We should care because we can do something about it,” said Brook, who is also a former air quality scientist for Environment Canada. “It is contributing to the costs of health care. It is affecting the quality of people’s lives.”

Health Canada estimates that air pollution contributes to 15,300 deaths per year in Canada, with many more people losing days suffering from asthma and acute respiratory symptoms as a result of pollution. This is a little more than the number of Canadians who die annually in accidents like car crashes, according to Statistics Canada.

Other studies come to similar conclusions as the research from CANUE. A recent report from the B.C. Lung Association found that many B.C. municipalities, including Victoria, much of the Lower Mainland and especially communities in the Interior like Grand Forks, Castlegar and Nelson, exceeded these levels.