AIR POLLUTION AND LIFE EXPECTANCY
Dr Hasenkopf noted: “You often see air pollution cited in terms of the number of people it kills. It’s millions across the world every year, but that number is so large and so difficult to connect with your own life.”
Her research team that came up with the Air Quality Life Index made that connection, converting air pollution into its impact on human life expectancy.
According to the index, people are losing as much as 3.2 years of life on average in China’s most polluted region of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei.
“That’s not just necessarily at the end of a long life,” Dr Hasenkopf pointed out.
The figure also factors in lives that are cut short, “like children or babies who are even more deeply affected by air pollution than, say, adult populations,” she said.
NEW ACTION PLAN
In December last year, China released a new air quality action plan to cut PM2.5 levels by 10 per cent next year, compared with 2020.
The plan also includes cutting the proportion of heavily polluted days each year to 1 per cent or less, and reducing emissions of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds by 10 per cent.
China is aiming for carbon neutrality by 2060, and wants non-fossil energy to account for at least 20 per cent of its total energy consumption by 2025.
Experts say China has made remarkable progress, but new targets are becoming harder to meet.
“There’s still a long way to go,” said Professor Huang Yanzhong, senior fellow for global health at American think tank Council on Foreign Relations.
“But improving air quality, because the low hanging fruit is no longer there, will be a more uphill battle.”
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