If we told you that only 0.001% of the world’s population is exposed to levels of pollution insurance according to World Health Organizationis nothing exaggerated, if it does not come from a groundbreaking study on pollution.

The study published in Lancet Planetary Health on daily environmental fine particles (PM2.5) worldwide, makes us see that only 0.001% of the world population is exposed to safe levels recommended by the World Health Organization.

This new analysis, which is the first in the world to show how the global distribution of (PM2.5) has changed in recent decades, is a wake-up call for governments and scientists around the world.

The study offers an understanding of the current situation of outdoor air pollution and how it is affecting people’s health.

“In this study, we used an innovative machine learning approach to integrate multiple meteorological and geological information to estimate daily PM2.5 concentrations at the global surface level with a high spatial resolution of approximately ten km (kilometers) × ten kmthe author explained Yuming Guo.

Following this, his team at Monash University’s School of Public Health Preventive Medicine in Australia created global grid cells between 2000 and 2019.

They focused on areas above 15 μg/m³ (micrograms per cubic meter of air), which the WHO considers the safe limit.

It should be remembered that according to the limit of the guidelines of the WHO in 2021, about 0.18% of the world’s land surface was exposed to an annual exposure below this limit in 2019.

Levels have increased in these regions

While they found that the two decades leading up to 2019, daily levels in Europe and North America have decreased, these levels increased for South Asia, but also for Australia, New Zealand, Central America and the Caribbean, recorded from collectively more than 70% of the days above what is safe.

This study also found that more than 90% of days in South and East Asia had daily PM2.5 concentrations greater than 15 μg/m³.

According to the report, from 2000 to 2019, the average annual level of PM2.5 worldwide was µg/m3, with the highest PM2.5 concentrations found in the East Asian regions (50.0 µg /m3) and South Asia (37.2 µg/m3).

On the other hand, Australia and New Zealand (8.5 μg/m³), other regions of Oceania (12.6 μg/m³) and South America (15.6 μg/m³) had the lowest annual PM2 concentrations. .5.

According to the report, dangerous concentrations of PM2.5 are also showing different seasonal patterns.

By Lay

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