The Deadly Price of Pollution

[Richard_P_Feynman]

Study finds pollution is deadlier than war, disaster, hunger

Environmental pollution—from filthy air to contaminated water—is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.

One out of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015—about 9 million—could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure, according to a major study released Thursday in the Lancet medical journal. The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report says, costing some $4.6 trillion in annual losses—or about 6.2 percent of the global economy.

Let this be a reminder to us that an environmental attitude towards the world is still valuable, and there is still much work to be done.

 

[adrina]

This is what has fried me about the cost efficiency argument. People saying that it costs industries too much money to be responsible for their waste or to make machinery to be less polluting. In the long run it will cost a whole lot more to clean up these messes. And that's just the direct cost of clean up - not the collateral damage in human health.

Whatever happened to "an ounce of prevention"?