Air Pollution
Fine particulate and ozone pollution is one of the largest single killers on earth, concentrated in Asia and Africa.
Severity score
86.4
Catastrophic · default weighting
Trajectory
Steady
What this is
Ambient and household air pollution together are associated with millions of premature deaths per year through heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, COPD and lower respiratory infections. Exposure is heavily concentrated in South Asia, East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike a discrete disaster, air pollution is a continuous condition, which makes it easy to overlook despite a death toll larger than most wars combined.
Score breakdown
Each factor is a 0–100 relative severity index, not the raw figure or a specific time period. The actual counts and periods are listed under "Standardized Impact" on the right.
Loss of life
96Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
96People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
98Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
60Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
50Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.
Audit trail
Everything this entry has been through — when it was first searched for, queued, reviewed and approved, and how its figures and rank have moved since.
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