One in eight deaths is due to air pollution, says WHO

Seven million people died from exposure to air pollution in 2012—equivalent to one in every eight of all deaths that year.1

New figures from the World Health Organization are more than double the previous estimates of deaths from air pollution. Previous estimates said that in 2004 two million people died from household air pollution2 and that 1.3 million died from outdoor air pollution in 2008.3

The most deaths were in the western Pacific and South East Asia, with a total of 3.3 million deaths linked to …