Air pollution caused over a million deaths across Africa in 2019, research finds

The enormous human and economic toll of breathing toxic air points to other systemic failures which could worsen lives in numerous other ways, writes Harry Cockburn

Smoke rises over a port in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone in West Africa (Getty)

Air pollution caused 1.1 million deaths across Africa in 2019, largely driven by household pollution from indoor cooking stoves, while outdoor pollution also increased, according to the most far-reaching examination of the problem across the continent to date.

Air pollution is costing African economies billions of dollars and there is also a “devastating” correlation in loss in the intellectual development of Africa’s children, the researchers led by Boston College in the US and UN Environment programme said.

Of the 1.1 million deaths from air pollution, household air pollution accounted for 700,000 fatalities, while increased levels of outdoor pollution claimed around 400,000 lives.

The international team of researchers said their study was the first continent-wide examination of the “far reaching impacts of air pollution in Africa”, and the results suggested that numbers of deaths linked to indoor air pollution had declined “slightly”, while outdoor, or ambient, air pollution related deaths were on the rise.

Philip Landrigan, a professor of biology at Boston College, and who co-led the research said: “The most disturbing finding was the increase in deaths from ambient air pollution.”

“While this increase is still modest, it threatens to increase exponentially as African cities grow in the next two to three decades and the continent develops economically.”

The African continent is undergoing a massive transformation, the research team noted.

Africa’s population is on track to more than triple in this century, from 1.3 billion in 2020 to 4.3 billion by 2100.

Cities are expanding, economies are growing, and life expectancy has almost doubled.

Meanwhile, fossil fuel combustion has driven an increase in outdoor air pollution that in 2019 killed 29.2 people per 100,000 population, an increase from 26.1 deaths per 100,000 in 1990, the report said.

Together, indoor and outdoor air pollution combine to make the issue the second largest cause of death in Africa, claiming more lives than tobacco, alcohol, motor vehicle accidents, and drug abuse.

Only AIDS causes more deaths.

Africa’s deaths make up part of a global death toll taken by air pollution, amounting to an estimated 6.7 million people worldwide in 2017.

“Air pollution in Africa has major negative impacts on health, human capital and the economy,” the researchers said.

“These impacts are growing in magnitude as countries develop.”

Examining the impact on children, the team calculated that air pollution exposure among infants and young children resulted in the loss of 1.96 billion IQ points across the continent.

The team studied trends in air pollution in Africa to determine impacts on human health and economic development in 54 African countries. The team particularly focused on three rapidly developing sub-Saharan countries – Ethiopia, Ghana and Rwanda.

“We focused on these three countries because they are all at somewhat different points in their economic development, and we reasoned that comparing air pollution patterns among them would give us a good indicator of future trends,” Professor Landrigan said.

Ambient air pollution could also be a harbinger of wider problems occurring, the report warns.

“In the absence of visionary leadership and intentional intervention, [ambient air pollution] could become a much larger cause of disease and premature death than at present and could pose a major threat to economic development,” the report states.

Economic output lost to air-pollution-related disease was $3bn in Ethiopia, or 1.16 per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product;  $1.6bn in Ghana (0.95 percent of GDP), and $349m in Rwanda (1.19 percent of GDP).

“We encourage Africa’s leaders to take advantage of the fact that their countries are still relatively early in their economic development and to transition rapidly to wind and solar energy, thus avoiding entrapment in fossil-fuel-based economies,” said Professor Landrigan.

“We argue that African countries are in a unique position to leapfrog over mistakes made elsewhere and to achieve prosperity without pollution.”

“Air pollution in Africa threatens economic development and future growth, but can be avoided by wise leaders who transition rapidly to wind and solar energy and avoid entrapment by coal, gas and oil,” he said.

The research is published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal.