Heavier air pollution in the coal-burning north of China takes an average of three years off a person’s lifespan, compared with residents of the country’s southern provinces, a recent study has found.

Policies implemented by the ruling Chinese Communist Party backing widespread coal-burning for central heating “is unintentionally causing people in northern China to live 3.1 years less than people in the south due to air pollution concentrations that are 46 percent higher,” a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found.

The elevated mortality is entirely due to an increase in cardiorespiratory deaths, indicating that northern China’s smog-filled winters are behind the phenomenon.

“Unveiling this important information helps build the case for policies that ultimately serve to improve the lives of the Chinese people and the lives of those globally who suffer from high levels of air pollution,” study co-author Zhou Maigeng, deputy head of chronic and noncommunicable diseases at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement.

Co-author Michael Greenstone, who heads the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, said 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.” Continue reading…