GlobalHealthCuratedhigh confidence

Chronic Respiratory Disease

Lung disease driven by smoke, dust and polluted air, concentrated in the poorest households.

Severity score

54.1

Severe · default weighting

Trajectory

Steady

What this is

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma affect over half a billion people. Exposure to household cooking smoke, outdoor particulates, occupational dust and tobacco explains most of the burden, which falls hardest on women and workers in low income countries.

Score breakdown

Loss of life

68

Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.

Lives negatively impacted

74

People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.

Financial cost

44

Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.

Environmental impact

20

Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.

Trajectory

34

Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.