Don't Take A Deep Breath: Outdoor Pollution Kills 3.3 Million A Year

Image: A masked man walks past trees shrouded with pollution haze in Beijing, China. Andy Wong/AP

npr.org - September 16th, 2015 - Susan Brink

More people die prematurely because of the air they breathe than the 2.8 million who die each year of HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.

That's the startling statistic from a new study in this week's journal Nature. The annual global death toll from outdoor air pollution is 3.3 million. (Premature death is a medical term that means a usually preventable death that occurs before expected — for instance, earlier than the life expectancy of age 78 in the U.S.).

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