Explained | What the new Lancet report says about India’s pollution problem

Pollution resulted in more than 23 lakh premature deaths in India in 2019, highest in the world, a study in The Lancet Planetary Health journal has revealed. 

The story so far: Pollution continues to be the biggest environmental health hazard, resulting in millions of premature deaths globally every year. In 2019, nine million (90 lakhs) people died around the world due to pollution. To put it simply, pollution was responsible for every sixth death globally that year. In India, more than 23 lakh people died prematurely due to pollution in 2019. Of them, 73 per cent of deaths occurred due to air pollution, the largest number of such deaths globally,

The findings have been revealed in a recent report— ‘Pollution and health: a progress update’, published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal on May 17. The report, which is an update to The Lancet’s 2015 study, takes into account data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2019. The global toll has remained unchanged since the previous analysis, which the researchers say is reflective of the “little effort” countries have put to prioritise action against pollution.

The United Nations defines pollution as the presence of substances and heat in the environment (air, water, land) whose nature, location, or quantity produces undesirable environmental effects. The new report, meanwhile, defines pollution as an unwanted waste of human origin released into air, land, water, and the ocean without regard for cost or consequence.

Pollution includes contamination of air by fine particulate matter (PM2·5); ozone; oxides of sulphur and nitrogen; freshwater pollution; contamination of the ocean by mercury, nitrogen, phosphorus, plastic, and petroleum waste; and poisoning of the land by lead, mercury, pesticides, industrial chemicals, electronic waste, and radioactive waste. The Lancet defines ‘modern forms of pollution as ambient air pollution and toxic chemical pollution.

When a fatality occurs before the average age of death in a population, it is termed as a premature death. In India, the average life expectancy at birth in 2019 was 69.5 years for men and 72 years for women. It came down to 67.5 years and 69.8 years, respectively, in 2020. 

The concept of Years of Life Lost or YLL, used for a better understanding of the cause of premature deaths, is employed for public health planning and prevention. The World Health Organisation defines YLL as a measure of premature mortality that takes into account both the frequency of deaths and the age it occurs.

Global pollution