Where Pollution Really Kills
Those of us who live in Western industrialized countries are used to hearing our governments and environmental movements claim that our fellow citizens are exposed to unprecedented levels of pollution. The truth is in fact quite the opposite — it is those living in poor, largely non-industrialized nations who face the greatest exposure to pollution.
A World Health Organization conference on pollution recently claimed that up to one billion people are annually exposed to pollution levels 100 times those of the WHO’s acceptable pollution levels. In reporting on the conference, the BBC reported as “startling” the claim that dangerous levels of pollution are experienced largely by people in developing countries, but this reality was always there for anyone to see.
Prior to industrialization, the West also experienced the sort of pollution problems now largely the province of the developing world. Rather than something like electricity or natural gas for heating, many in the developing world burn wood, coal and in some cases animal dung as a primary energy source. Combine that with the fact that many housing structures in the developing world are poorly designed with little ventilation and the result is often very high exposure to pollutants.
The WHO estimates, for example, that half a million children die each year in India as a result from respiratory infections they contract in part from massive exposure to indoor pollutants. And the WHO report apparently doesn’t even begin to mention the health problems caused by polluted water in much of the developing world (few people get cholera in industrialized nations).
Contrary to environmentalists who see rich industrialized nations as antithetical to human health, in fact it is the sort of ages-old pre-industrial methods still being used in much of the Third World.
Source:
Pollution ‘hits rural poor hardest’. The BBC, September 15, 2000.
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