WHO warns low air quality kills 7 million a year, issues new AQGs

Agency calls for urgent action to tackle one of biggest environmental threats to human health, with Southeast Asia being the worst-affected region.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has strengthened its air quality guidelines, or AQGs, as it warned that air pollution was one of the biggest environmental threats to human health, causing seven million premature deaths a year.

The United Nations health agency said on Wednesday that urgent action was needed to reduce exposure to air pollution, ranking its burden of disease “on a par with other major global health risks such as unhealthy diet and tobacco smoking”.

The WHO said the burden of disease attributable to air pollution was