New Study: Short-Term Exposure to Air Pollution Is Killing Over a Million People Each Year

Annually, over a million deaths worldwide are associated with short-term exposure (ranging from hours to days) to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the air.
Every year, over one million people worldwide lose their lives due to short-term exposure (ranging from hours to days) to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) found in air pollution, according to a recent study. Eastern Asia accounts for more than half of these global fatalities linked to brief encounters with PM2.5.

To date most studies have focused on the health impacts of living in cities where pollution levels are consistently high, ignoring the frequent “spikes” in pollution that can impact smaller urban areas that occur for instance landscape fires, dust, and other intermittent extreme air-pollution concentration events.