600,000 child deaths every year is caused by high air pollution, UNICEF says
Around 300 million children worldwide, or almost one in seven kids, live in areas with high levels of outdoor air pollution and they are the most vulnerable to the damage, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the children’s agency under the United Nations (UN).
Areas where outdoor pollution was highest, mostly in South Asia, were defined by the agency as those with at least six times more than the international guidelines set by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Almost 200 governments, who were called on by UNICEF, will meet in Morocco from November 7 to 18 to talk about global warming and the restriction of the use of fossil fuels, which could result in improved health and slower climate change.
Of the total 300 million children worldwide affected, 220 million lived in South Asia. The region was identified through satellite imagery developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the US.
UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake said air pollution was a “major contributing factor in the deaths of around 600,000 children under five every year”, causing illnesses such as pneumonia.
In a statement, Lake said that pollutants don’t only harm children’s developing lungs, but can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and cause permanent damage to the child’s developing brain.
According to Nicholas Rees, a UNICEF specialist on climate and economic analysis who wrote the report, poor children are the ones most affected by air pollution.
The WHO estimates that outdoor pollution killed 3.7 million people all over the world in 2012, including 27,000 children aged under five years of age.
Factories, power plants and vehicles using fossil fuels, dust and burning of waste were among sources.Indoor air pollution, often caused by coal- or wood-burning cooking stoves used in homes in developing nations, killed even more people, 4.3 million, of whom 531,000 were aged under five, it said.
The UN-led meeting in Morocco was called on by UNICEF to hasten a shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energies such as wind or solar power, to improve children’s access to health care, limit children’s exposure to pollution and to step up monitoring of the air.
Category: Features, Health alert
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