The top ten countries by air pollution listed in another comment hardly produce anything the developed world uses, they mostly export natural resources.

One cohort susceptible is asthmatics.

Most asthmatics can live a long, healthy life - certainly not die at the age of 9 https://apnews.com/article/asthma-europe-london-air-pollutio...

I, along with other asthmatics, did notice a marked improvement in symptoms during the Covid 19 lockdowns as there was less traffic on the roads - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8011425/

This is the problem with "Well, these people are frail, and you have to die of something" assertions. See also, Covid 19 and "most people who died weren't healthy, they had other conditions!".

Linked from the article this seems interesting: https://ourworldindata.org/data-review-air-pollution-deaths

But from my understanding most deaths attributed to pollution, specially indoors, relate to fireplaces, cooking, oil lighting or other "I'm making smoke indoors" activities which will cause lung issues later on. Even having candles on all the time isn't good for you.

The rest as far as I understand is all estimated by putting a finger in the air and subdividing lung cancer deaths into what they feel like the causes were.

Pollutions impacts people across all age groups, including children and otherwise healthy adults. Many pollution deaths aren't inevitable near-term deaths.

Health effects include:

- Respiratory diseases developing in otherwise healthy people

- Cardiovascular damage at an early age affecting long-term health

- Developmental impacts on children with lifelong consequences

- Cancer and other conditions with substantial life-shortening effects

Found this in an article linked to by this one:

   Exposure to air pollutants increases our risk of developing a range of diseases. These diseases fall into three major categories: cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, and cancers.

    It makes sense to think of these estimates as ‘avoidable deaths’ – they are the number of deaths that would be avoided if air pollution was reduced to levels that would not increase the risk of developing these lethal diseases.

> Could it be that many of those people whose death was caused by pollution may have been frail and close to death anyway?

What point are you trying to make? I mean, you don't seem to dispute that pollution can and does kill people.

You're right, "everyone dies of something" is technically true, but the key issue with pollution isn’t just that it shortens life, it's how it does it. Chronic exposure doesn’t just tip over the already frail, it increases the burden of disease across the board

There was some interesting data from China where the north got free coal heating but not the south. There was a difference in life expectancy of 5.5 years. Maybe not the best free gift. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/08/northern...

Try going to a heavy polluted city, something like Delhi in the Winter. You would honestly have no doubt about how bad it is for you health. Because you will feel it within the first 24 hours.

everyone will die of something, reduce risks and everyone will die after more time, or better.

I think pollution is better thought of like starvation, as something that makes you frailer so that you end up dying over something that a healthier person would have survived. Pretty much the opposite of the perspective you take.

You don't see a lot of people arguing that starvation doesn't mean much because the deaths of starving people are more directly caused by disease or injury.

As you said, everyone will die of something and those who die are close to death. Therefore you can now justify abandoning any treatment that increases lifespans. The new baseline lifespan is shorter, therefore everyone is closer to death, let's abandon the next treatment.

>It's interesting to see the number of deaths caused by pollution. But everyone will die of something.

People can die because they don't have access to energy or agricultural products.

I wonder what would be the word population now had we not used fire, coal oil, haf we not grew rice and cereals, had we not raised cows and sheep.

Curated meat might eventually make a dent. Hopefully.

There is also no alternative for the 8B people out there.

It’s true that we’ve stopped some especially bad things - the anti-CFC campaign should get more attention – but part of the problem is that we haven’t improved in aggregate. If Californians drive cars which get 50+ mpg with low emissions, but a hundred million people in India start driving new cars with less strict emissions controls, the planet is in aggregate worse off. Something over half of the CO2 in the atmosphere was emitted after 1990, which is a general proxy for the rest of the world industrializing.

Isn't that what the bottom set of graphs show?

And smoking! And, further back, banning of coal burning in cities, which led to lethal fogs in 1950s London.

As mankind? Think how many cars were there in South America, Africa or Asia 50-70 years ago. Its what now, 100x more?

Even in Europe its at least 10x but probably more compared to my childhood where I lived (east & west). My parents used to play as kids on the roads next to their places, those few cars per hour were slow and easy to spot and hear. Now its a car every few seconds at least.

We also found plenty more way to pollute and more types of materials to burn. Also all is now permeated with micro and nano plastics.

While I’m quite concerned about particulates generally (I use a few HEPA air purifiers around the house etc.), with this kind of thing it does feel like that kind of matter can’t be as bad for you as other types of PM2.5. I haven’t yet seen any research quantifying it (most studies just look at all PM2.5 as a single category) but surely there must be a difference about how bad different types of particulates are depending on what they’re made of - like those from combustion, tyre wear etc. it would seem are very obviously going to be toxic, but I also measure raised PM2.5 from cooking with my electric oven or induction stove (but not burning the food), surely that can’t be quite as bad? And sea spray you would think would be even less harmful…