SAccording to Dr Kurt Straif, from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the evidence is there and we can no longer ignore it: “We now know that outdoor air pollution is not only a risk major for health in general, but also a leading environmental cause of cancer deaths. These are exactly the same conclusions that led WHO specialists to state, bluntly, that “The air we breathe has been contaminated by a mixture of substances that cause cancer.”
This has the merit of being clear. There is no beating around the bush in the latest report from the World Health Organization (WHO) on pollution and its devastation on health around the world. The WHO now classifies air pollution as a carcinogen. This, in addition to the fact that pollution remains one of the main causes of respiratory and heart diseases.
This new report concerns several studies which sound the alarm to alert global public opinion to the devastation caused by several economic sectors which make profits at the expense of human health. It is now scientifically established that pollution in the air we breathe causes fatal diseases and has already caused millions of deaths in many regions of the world. For the director of the IARC, Christopher Wild, air pollution is one of the most formidable carcinogens that must be fought today to save human lives. The detailed report highlights the main causes of this atmospheric pollution which has reached unprecedented peaks over the last ten years.
The WHO clearly points the finger at all types of industries, with all the emissions that contaminate the air, whether from vehicles, factories or the discharge of chemical waste that ends up in the oceans and evaporates to further pollute the air we breathe. In this sense, what we call “fine particles” have been classified by the IARC in the “definite carcinogen” category. For Dr. Dana Loomis, from the IARC, “The results of the studies point in the same direction: the risk of developing lung cancer increases significantly in people exposed to air pollution.”
In recent years, air pollution has broken all records and the predictions for the future are worse. Which amounts to saying that the figures put forward above should be revised upwards for the next decade when air quality will be one of the key factors in world health. In this sense, you should know that in 2024, air pollution will constitute the second risk factor for death in the world, according to the 5th edition of the State of Global Air (SoGA) report.
This report, published by the Health Effects Institute (HEI) – an independent, non-profit research institute based in the United States – reveals that air pollution was responsible for 8.1 million deaths worldwide in 2021. Beyond these deaths, it is also the cause of disabling chronic diseases for millions of people, which weighs heavily on health systems, economies and societies.
