Air pollution has now overtaken HIV/AIDS, direct cigarette smoking and even war as the top killers in the world.
According to a research by the University of Chicago, constantly breathing tiny particles from polluted air is capable of reducing life by two years.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) as of 2016 revealed that Kenya's life expectancy stood at 67 years which could be threatened by air pollution.
In other more polluted economies such as India, however, breathing can reduce an individual’s life expectancy by up to 11 years.
The University’s Air Quality Life Index (AQLI), a website designed to tell how many life expectancy years are threatened based on location, aims at promoting policies for a cleaner environment.
"The fact that this AQLI tool quantifies the number of years I and you have lost to air pollution makes me worried," remarked Indian MP according to The Standard.
Speaking in connection with the research, the university’s director of Energy Policy Institute, Michael Greenstone, sought to transform the index into “the most important metric that exists – life."
Priorly, cancer had been ranked as the top killer in the world accounting for more than 9.6 million deaths in 2018 alone.
The most common cancer deaths included lung cancer (responsible for 1.7 million deaths) followed by colorectal cancer that affects the colon and rectum (862,000 deaths) and then stomach cancer (783,000 deaths).
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