Air pollution takes years off people’s lives. It causes substantial pain and suffering among adults and children alike. And it damages food production at a time when we need to feed more people than ever. This is not just an economic issue; it is a moral one.

Air pollution can be produced both outdoors and indoors. For the poorest families, indoor smog from coal- or dung-fired cooking stoves is typically the more serious problem. As economies develop and start to electrify, motorize and urbanize, outdoor air pollution becomes the bigger issue.

Cleaner technologies are available, with the potential to improve air quality. But policymakers tend to be short-sighted. They focus on the costs of action, rather than the costs of inaction. Economic growth and rising energy demand are giving rise to emissions of air pollutants. Concentrations of particulate matter (PM) and ozone are relentlessly rising.

A new OECD report, the Economic Consequences of Outdoor Air Pollution, estimates that outdoor air pollution will cause 6 to 9 million premature deaths annually by 2060, compared with 3 million in 2010. That is equivalent to a person dying every four to five seconds. Cumulatively, more than 200 million people will die prematurely in the next 45 years as a result of air pollution.

There will also be more pollution-related illness. New cases of bronchitis in children aged 6 to 12 are forecast to soar to 36 million per year by 2060, from 12 million today. For adults, we predict 10 million new cases per year by 2060, up from 3.5 million today. Children are also being increasingly affected by asthma. All of this will translate into more pollution-related hospital admissions, projected to rise to 11 million in 2060, from 3.6 million in 2010.

India and China better watch out! These health problems will be concentrated in densely populated areas with high PM concentrations, especially in cities in China and India. Per capita, mortality will also each high levels in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and other parts of Asia, such as South Korea, where aging populations are highly vulnerable.

The impact of air pollution is often discussed in dollar terms. By 2060, 3.75 billion working days per year could be lost due to the adverse health effects of dirty air — what economists call the “disutility of illness.” The direct market impact of this pollution in terms of lower worker productivity, higher health spending and lower crop yields could exceed 1 percent of GDP, or $2.6 trillion, annually by 2060.

Massive as they are, however, the dollar figures do not reflect the true costs of air pollution. Premature deaths from breathing in small particles and toxic gases, and the pain and suffering from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, do not have a market price. Nor does the experience of constantly inhaling foul-smelling air, or forcing your child to wear a face mask just to play outside. These burdens weigh far more heavily on people than any price tag can represent.

It is time for our governments to stop fussing about the costs of efforts to limit air pollution, and start worrying about the much larger costs of allowing it to continue unchecked. Our lives and those of our children are in their hands!

-from Simon Upton (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)

  Air pollution, development, earth, environment