Air pollution and health

Air pollution is one of the great killers of our age. Polluted air was responsible in 2015 for 6·4 million deaths worldwide: 2·8 million from household air pollution and 4·2 million from ambient air pollution.1,2 In the same year, tobacco caused 7 million deaths, AIDS 1·2 million, tuberculosis 1·1 million, and malaria 0·7 million.3 In the absence of aggressive control, ambient air pollution is projected by 2060 to cause between 6 million and 9 million deaths per year.4