Gone are times when cigarette smoking was the number one reason for the reduced human life expectancy. Air Pollutants caused mostly because of burning fossil fuels has brought down the life expectancy by 2 years. Cigarette smoking on another hand – Both direct and passive, reduces life expectancy by 1.6 years. While a few years ago they were the top killers when it comes to cutting global life expectancy, Air Pollution has raced to the first position becoming a severe and major threat.
According to the new pollution index and the report based and produced by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, it is established that particulate pollution is the single greatest threat to human health as of now. This is to say that Air Pollution has more effect on life expectancy than most communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis. Even more, they can be more harmful to life expectancy when parallelly compared with cigarette smoking and war consequences. AQLI reports have proven that poor air quality that is because of the unnecessary increase in particulate pollution has become a major threat to life in general.
The confounding thing here is the realization that Air Pollution is, in fact, a serious threat. Most of the times, the confusion and translation of the threat gets diluted when people are unable to understand the various colors that represent air quality when the AQI Index is considered. The well-being of people can be attributed to a proper understanding of Air Quality and what parameters are responsible for the change is the way we take ourselves and our health seriously.
Scientists and health organization personals have developed AQLI which stands for Air Quality Life Index which aims at breaking down the effects of air pollution down to the basics – Something that people will understand easily. Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics and director of EPIC has stated that since the L in AQLI stands for ‘life’ and the entire infographic focuses on life expectancy, people are bound to take notice.
The above development has brought grievous threat to livelihood and existence as people can always stop smoking in order to keep a check on the life expectancy. On the other hand, there’s only little that a person can do individually to fight Air Pollution. AQI India is working towards letting people know how the Air Quality in the country is really pushing them towards impending health issues. The AQLI has stated and warned that the age-old methods of measuring the Air Quality Index are no more providing us with viable data. The solution is looking into new methods that deal with the minutest of problems that make Air Pollution look like the threat that it actually is. Methods that put matters into perspective should be put into place right away.
Since Air Pollution is cutting short a person’s life considerably, there’s a sudden need to take it very seriously. If not dealt with in the right ways, this method of data collection and prevention will no more be the solution to reducing life expectancy. We need to wake up and start working towards it right away.
