On the Subject of Pandemics

The illness and death toll from the coronavirus, or COVID-19 as it is now known, steadily advances. As I write, the bug has sickened over 95,000 people and killed over 3,300, mostly in China. It still has a long way to go to match the flu which annually takes hundreds of thousands of lives globally, 3,500 on average in Canada alone. But both pale by comparison to the villain discussed in an article published by the European Society of Cardiology entitled "The world faces an air pollution ‘pandemic.’"

According to recent research by the Max Planck Institute, global air pollution caused an extra 8.8 million premature deaths in 2015, more than HIV/AIDS, parasitic and vector-born diseases such as malaria, and all forms of violence, including wars, combined. Even more than smoking (7.2 million deaths).

The researchers looked at the effect of air pollution on six categories of disease, including lung cancer, heart disease, and other non-communicable diseases including conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes. They distinguished between human-made air pollution and pollution from natural sources such as desert dust and wildfire emissions. About two-thirds of the premature deaths are caused by human-made air pollution, mainly from fossil fuels. Five and a half million deaths a year potentially avoidable.

No viral diseases are as guilty. The bugs are nasty but by far the worst damage done to us we do ourselves. And perhaps first among our instruments of mischief are fossil fuels.