That s more people than die from breast and prostate cancers combined.
Air pollution is a huge public health problem.
The idea that air pollution is harmful is hardly new. However, critics of the previous research of Schwartz and other air pollution researchers have claimed that those who die from air pollution are the very ill who would have died within a few days in any case. If it were true that people who died from air pollution would have died soon anyway, reasoned Schwartz, then there should be a correspondence between an increase in death rates during or immediately following a period of air pollution and a decrease in death rates a few days later. His analysis looked at three time periods of differing duration in Boston, comparing data on air pollution, deaths, and weather. This may be because air pollution increases the numbers of people seriously ill with heart and lung disease, and therefore at risk of dying.