[Stoves] News: New Index finds air pollution reduces global life expectancy by nearly 2 years, making it the single greatest threat to human health

[Nikhil Desai]

New Index finds air pollution reduces global life expectancy by nearly 2
years, making it the single greatest threat to human health
<https://aqli.epic.uchicago.edu/news/new-index-finds-air-pollution-reduces-global-life-expectancy-by-nearly-2-years-making-it-the-single-greatest-threat-to-human-health/>
19
November 2018

Excerpts below. I happen to have picked apart Greenstone's work in India
and China a few years ago. I am incredulous that he gets away with murder.
He does not betray the honesty that, say, Kirk Smith does in his journal
papers (rather admiringly).

Here Greenstone has the audacity to attribute all air pollution to fossil
fuels. With economists like these - he is an economist, of all things - who
can believe any economists? :-)

Nikhil



"Loss of life expectancy is highest in Asia, exceeding 6 years in many
parts of India and China; some residents of the United States still lose up
to a year of life from pollution.

Fossil fuel-driven particulate air pollution cuts global average life
expectancy by 1.8 years per person, according to a new pollution index and
accompanying report produced by the Energy Policy Institute at the
University of Chicago (EPIC). The Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) establishes
particulate pollution as the single greatest threat to human health
globally, with its effect on life expectancy exceeding that of devastating
communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, behavioral killers
like cigarette smoking, and even war. Critically, the AQLI reports these
results in tangible terms that are relatable for most people.

“Around the world today, people are breathing air that represents a serious
risk to their health. But the way this risk is communicated is very often
opaque and confusing, translating air pollution concentrations into colors,
like red, brown, orange, and green. What those colors mean for people’s
wellbeing has always been unclear,” says Michael Greenstone, the Milton
Friedman Professor in Economics and director of the Energy Policy Institute
at the University of Chicago (EPIC).

Greenstone also noted, “My colleagues and I developed the AQLI, where the
‘L’ stands for ‘life,’ to address these shortcomings. It takes particulate
air pollution concentrations and converts them into perhaps the most
important metric that exists—life expectancy.”
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