If India reduced its air pollution to comply with the air quality standard of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Indians could live about four years longer on average.

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“These results greatly strengthen the case that long-term exposure to particulate air pollution causes substantial reductions in life expectancy. They indicate that particulates are the greatest current environmental risk to human health, with the impact on life expectancy in many parts of the world similar to the effects of every man, woman and child smoking cigarettes for several decades,” co-author Michael Greenstone, director of Energy Policy Institute at University of Chicago (EPIC), told indiaclimatedialogue.net. “The histories of the United States, parts of Europe, Japan and a handful of other countries teach us that air pollution can be reduced, but it requires robust policy and enforcement.”

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Air Quality-Life Index

The results from this paper can be used to quantify the number of years that air pollution reduces lifespan around the globe. Greenstone and his colleagues at EPIC used the finding that an additional 10 microgrammes per cubic metre of PM10 reduces life expectancy by 0.6 years to develop a new pollution index, which has been named the Air Quality-Life Index (AQLI).

The AQLI translates particulate pollution concentrations into the impact on lifespan. It provides a reliable measure of the potential gain in life expectancy communities could see if their pollution concentrations are brought into compliance with WHO, national or some other standard. Unlike much of the research linking air pollution and human health consequences, the AQLI is based on the consequences of sustained exposure to air pollution and plausibly isolates the impact from other factors that could affect health. It serves as an important complement to the frequently used Air Quality Index (AQI), which is a complicated function of air pollution concentrations and does not map directly to health.

The new index allows users to better understand the impact of air pollution on their lives by calculating how much longer they would live if the pollution in the air they breathe were brought into compliance with national or WHO standards. “The AQLI uses critical data and information gathered from our China research and applies it to every country, allowing billions of people around the world who are exposed to high air pollution levels to estimate how much longer they would live if they breathed cleaner air,” Greenstone explained. Continue reading…