Outdoor air pollution kills 3 million people worldwide each year! According to the World Health Organization, with these numbers of people falling victim to vehicles and industrial emissions, 1.6 million people are killed by indoor pollution too, by using solid fuel.
Since most of the cases are in poor countries, no much remedy has yet been found as cutting waste and clearing up pollution costs huge amount of money.
Air pollution does not seem to spare the rich as well. It also leads to 310,000 premature deaths in Europe each year.
With Pakistan, too, getting the burns well, it has been found that air pollution kills more than 22,000 adults and 700 children every year. This eventually leads to a loss of Rs 365 billion to the country’s economy annually, according to the World Conservation Union’s recent report.
According to the World Conservation Union, the World Bank has made assessments on environmental degradation, pointing out the most significant environmental damage impacts — like illness and premature mortality resulting from air pollution.
Contaminated water supply is a common source there leading to diarrhoeal diseases and typhoid. Lack of sanitation and hygiene are also major factors leading to the diseases.
With approximately 325 million gallons of wastewater generated each day in Karachi alone, what leads the scenario to a dire consequence is ‘management of waste,’ which is extremely weak.
Wastewater treatment facilities are absent across the country excepting only Islamabad and Karachi.
Though Pakistan deserves a pat for its total contribution to global greenhouse emissions being less than one percent, it needs stringent laws to curb its air pollution as the impact of climate change on the country’s population as well as economy is considerably worrying.
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