Dirty air could shave five years off people’s lives in south Asia

People living in south Asia could lose about five years of their lives on average unless air quality improves to WHO-prescribed levels, according to a new assessment.

Released Tuesday by the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute, the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) report for 2022 says that air pollution is the biggest threat to human life globally. The Index finds that particulate air pollution takes 2.2 years off global average life expectancy comparable to that of smoking, and far exceeding that of alcohol use, unsafe water, HIV/AIDS and terrorism.

Despite ambitious schemes to control aerial pollutants, some 510 million residents of the Indo-Gangetic plains of northern India stand to lose as much as 7.6 years of life expectancy, if the current high levels of pollution persist, according to a media release on the report.

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