Quick hit: Guardian article says that in Africa, air pollution kills more than malnutrition or dirty water.
And then boom, a few days later the NYT writes about UNICEF's claim that 300 million children breathe toxic air, particularly in China and India. Particulate matter contributes to heart failure, asthma, and pneumonia, and cuts children's cognitive functioning.
Worldwide, air pollution kills seven million per year, including 600,000 children: 1 in 10 deaths of children under 5 is attributable to air pollution. Survivors go on to be damaged in ways we are only beginning to understand.
I'm going to a talk tomorrow at the World Bank on how air pollution affects families in Peru. One way they identify is that sick children keep parents home from work. I know, it doesn't take a Ph.D. to figure that one out, but if you were listing all the impacts of air pollution, would you have come up with that? It wouldn't have been one of the first things I came up with!
