AIR POLLUTION AND DEATHS IN INDIA

About:

• India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative is a venture of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
  
  
• The recent findings were published in The Lancet Planetary Health were released on Thursday at the ICMR.
  
  

Key findings:

• India, with 18% of the world’s population, has 26% of the global premature deaths and disease burden due to air pollution.
  
  
• One in eight deaths in India was attributable to air pollution in India in 2017.
  
  
• 4 lakh deaths in India in 2017 were due to air pollution, which included 6.7 lakh deaths due to outdoor particulate matter air pollution and 4.8 lakh deaths due to household air pollution.
  
  
• Over half of the deaths due to air pollution were in persons less than 70 years of age.
  
  
• In 2017, 77% population of India was exposed to ambient particulate matter PM2.5 above the recommended limit by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
  
  
• The highest PM2.5 exposure level was in Delhi, followed by the other north Indian States of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana.
  
  
• The disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), attributable to air pollution in India in 2017 for major non-communicable diseases were at least as high as those attributable to tobacco use.
  
  
• The average life expectancy in India would have been 1.7 years higher if the air pollution level were less than the minimal level causing health loss, with the highest increases in the northern States of Rajasthan (2.5 years), Uttar Pradesh (2.2 years) and Haryana (2.1 years)