Polluted air cuts global lifeexpectancy by two years
would live five years longer if levels of fine particulate matter met World Health Organization standards, according to a report from the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute.
"Clean air pays back in additional years of life for people across the world," lead research Crista Hasenkopf and colleagues said in the Air Quality Life Index report.Major gains in China Central and West Africa, along with much of Southeast Asia and parts of central America, also face pollution levels—and shortened lives—well above theSurprisingly, PM2.5 pollution in 2020, the most recent data available, was virtually unchanged from the year before despite a sharp slow-down in the"In South Asia, pollution actually rose during the first year of the pandemic," the authors noted.PM2.5 pollution fell in the nation of 1.