Thread by @bopinion

More than 10 million people die each year from air pollution — far more than the estimated 2.6 million people who have died from Covid-19.

And while the virus is headline news, ordinary air pollution remains a side issue for policy wonks and technocrats trib.al/C3j6nuK

You might wonder whether the estimate of 10.2 million excess deaths from pollution is accurate.

When residents in China and India go outside, the air damages their respiratory and circulatory systems, shortening their lives trib.al/C3j6nuK

The 10.2 million estimate draws upon 2012 data, and since 2012 China has cut its emissions considerably.

Yet many other countries have seen more pollution over that time, so data inaccuracies can cut in both directions trib.al/C3j6nuK

If you are still skeptical, note that earlier World Health Organization estimates for annual deaths from air pollution typically range between 6 million and 7 million.

To repeat: That is per year trib.al/C3j6nuK

Why aren’t these deaths a bigger issue in U.S. political and policy discourse?

One reason may be that 62% of those deaths are in China and India trib.al/C3j6nuK

The number of premature deaths due to particulate matter in North America was 483,000, just slightly lower than the number of measured deaths from Covid to date.

An estimated 876 of those deaths were of children under the age of 4 trib.al/C3j6nuK

Another reason may be its invisibility. It is rare to see or read about a person dying directly from air pollution.

Lung cancer and cardiac disease are frequently cited as causes of death, even though they may stem from air pollution trib.al/C3j6nuK

Another issue is that air pollution does not fit neatly into current ideological battles.

It is difficult to find an estimate of the number of people who die each year from global warming, although it is certainly nowhere close to 10 million trib.al/C3j6nuK

Talking more about air pollution also might distract from the larger fight against climate change.

It’s also possible that if activists succeed in limiting climate change, air pollution will significantly decrease trib.al/C3j6nuK

Still, those explanations aren’t enough.

If something is killing 10 million people a year, that phenomenon should be the main focus of debate. Is it unreasonable to expect a nation’s politics to have an obsession with its biggest problems? trib.al/C3j6nuK

Since 2008, the U.S. Embassy in China has been tweeting updates about Beijing’s air quality, making the public more aware of the issue.

The broader lesson is clear. Once you start taking air pollution seriously, the whole world starts to look different trib.al/C3j6nuK