Air pollution in Africa responsible for 1.1 million deaths in 2019: study
CTV
A new study says that air pollution was responsible for 1.1 million deaths in Africa in 2019 while costing billions of dollars in GDP for African countries.
The study was led by researchers based in Massachusetts and involved researchers from Kenya and Rwanda affiliated with the UN Environment Programme. The authors published their findings this month in The Lancet Planetary Health.
The researchers looked at the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Study, a Lancet study from October 2020 that measured diseases and causes of death in over 200 countries and territories, as well as air pollution data from the World Health Organization.
Most of the air pollution deaths in Africa were related to household air pollution, which accounted for 697,000 deaths that year. Many African households still rely on fuels such as charcoal and kerosene for indoor cookstoves. In Ethiopia and Rwanda, an estimated 98 per cent of households still use these fuels.
But while deaths due to household air pollution have been slowly declining, deaths from ambient air pollution have been on the rise. In 2015, air pollution deaths accounted for 361,000 deaths compared to 383,000 in 2019.
