- China's Jia brings film spanning love, change over decades to Busan
- Paying out disaster relief before climate catastrophe strikes
- Chinese shares drop on stimulus upset, Asia tracks Wall St higher
- SE Asian summit seeks progress on Myanmar civil war
- How climate funds helped Peru's women beekeepers stay afloat
- Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded as wars rage
- Pacific island nations swamped by global drug trade
- AI-aided research, new materials eyed for Nobel Chemistry Prize
- Mozambique elects new president in tense vote
- The US economy is solid: Why are voters gloomy?
- Balkan summit to rally support for struggling Ukraine
- New stadium gives Real Madrid a headache
- Alonso, Manaea shine as 'Miracle Mets' blitz Phillies
- Harris, Trump trade blows in US election media blitz
- Harry's Bar in Paris drinks to US straw-poll centenary
- Osama bin Laden's son Omar banned from returning to France
- Afghan man arrested for plotting US election day attack
- Brazil lifts ban on Musk's X, ending standoff over disinformation
- Harris holds slight edge nationally over Trump: poll
- Chelsea edge Real Madrid in Women's Champions League, Lyon win
- Japan PM to dissolve parliament for 'honeymoon' snap election
- 'Diego Lives': Immersive Maradona exhibit hits Barcelona
- Brazil Supreme Court lifts ban on Musk's X
- Scientists sound AI alarm after winning physics Nobel
- Six-year-old girl among missing after Brazil landslide
- Nobel-winning physicist 'unnerved' by AI technology he helped create
- Mexico president rules out new 'war on drugs'
- Israeli defense minister postpones trip to Washington: Pentagon
- Europe skipper Donald in talks with Garcia over Ryder return
- Kenya MPs vote to impeach deputy president in historic move
- Former US coach Berhalter named Chicago Fire head coach
- New York Jets fire head coach Saleh: team
- Australia crush New Zealand in Women's T20 World Cup
- US states accuse TikTok of harming young users
- 'Evacuate now, now, now': Florida braces for next hurricane
- US Supreme Court skeptical of challenge to 'ghost guns' regulation
- Sparks fly as Orban berates EU 'elites' in parliament trip
- US finalizes rule to remove lead pipes within a decade
- Solanke hungry for second England cap after seven-year wait
- Gilded canopy restored at Vatican basilica
- Zverev scrapes through, Djokovic cruises to Shanghai Masters last 16
- Trump secretly sent Covid tests to Putin: Bob Woodward book
- Gauff answers critics: 'It's hard to win all the time'
- Neural networks, machine learning? Nobel-winning AI science explained
- China says raised 'serious concerns' with US over trade curbs
- Boeing delivers 27 MAX jets in September despite strike
- German 'Maddie' suspect could be free in 2025 after cleared of other sex crimes
- Italy seek Nations League consistency as Germany continue rebuild
- From boom to budgeting as reality bites for Saudi football
- Stock markets diverge as Hong Kong sinks, oil prices fall
Air pollution linked to nearly 2,000 child deaths a day: report
Nearly 2,000 children die every day from health problems linked to air pollution, which is now the second biggest risk factor for early death worldwide, a report said Wednesday.
Exposure to air pollution contributed to the deaths of 8.1 million people -- around 12 percent of all fatalities -- in 2021, according to the report from the US-based Health Effects Institute.
This means air pollution has overtaken tobacco use and poor diet to become the second leading risk factor for early death, behind only high blood pressure, it said.
Little kids are particularly vulnerable to air pollution, and the institute partnered with the UN Children's Fund UNICEF for its annual State of Global Air report.
Air pollution contributed to the deaths of more than 700,000 children under the age of five, the report found.
More than 500,000 of those deaths were attributed to cooking indoors using dirty fuels such as coal, wood or dung, mostly in Africa and Asia.
"These are problems we know that we can solve," Pallavi Pant, the Health Effects Institute's head of global health, told AFP.
- 'Profound effects on next generation' -
Nearly every person in the world breathes unhealthy levels of air pollution every day, the report found.
Over 90 percent of the deaths were linked to tiny airborne pollutants called PM2.5, which measure 2.5 micrometres or less, it said.
Inhaling PM2.5 has been found to increase the risk of lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and a range of other health problems.
The report aimed to link the rates of such diseases with air pollution levels.
But despite the "pretty stark" figures, the report could still be underestimating air pollution's impact, Pant said.
It did not take into account how air pollution could affect brain health, neurodegenerative diseases or what impact using solid fuels for heating could have, she explained.
The report also found that ozone pollution -- which is expected to get worse as the world warms due to human-driven climate change -- was linked to nearly 500,000 deaths in 2021.
"Increasingly, many parts of the world are seeing very short, intense episodes of air pollution," during events such as wildfires, dust storms or extreme heat, which can drive up ozone levels, Pant said.
There are "very similar solutions" for both climate change and air pollution -- particularly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, she added.
More can also be done about using dirty solid fuels for cooking indoors, Pant said, pointing to how China had made significant improvements in this area.
More than two billion people cook on basic stoves or over open fires indoors, inhaling the harmful smoke.
Partly due to access to cleaner cookstoves, the rate of small children dying from problems linked to air pollution has fallen by more than 50 percent since 2000, the report said.
In May, the International Energy Agency announced that $2.2 billion had been pledged by governments and companies to improve access to less deadly cooking methods.
The report released Wednesday used data covering more than 200 countries and territories from the Global Burden of Disease study conducted by the US-based Institute For Health Metrics and Evaluation.
"Every day almost 2,000 children under five years die because of health impacts linked to air pollution," UNICEF's Kitty van der Heijden said in a statement.
"Our inaction is having profound effects on the next generation."
M.A.Colin--AMWN