POLLUTION FACTS

POLLUTION IS A GLOBAL KILLER
Pollution likely affects over a billion people around the world, with millions poisoned and killed each year. 
The World Heath Organization estimates that 25 percent of all deaths in the developing world are directly attributable
to environmental factor.1 Some researchers estimate that exposure to pollution causes 40 percent of deaths annually.

People affected by pollution problems are much more susceptible to contracting other diseases. 
Others have impaired neurological development, damaged immune systems, and long-term health problems.
The world’s worst polluted places are in the developing world.  
Similar conditions no longer exist in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia today. 
In wealthier countries, there are sufficient legal, political, cultural and economic disincentives for polluters
to allow their activities to affect human health on a massive scale. 
Unfortunately, many of these tactics do not work in developing countries that are trying
to increase their industrialization and make themselves economically competitive for manufacturing and processing.

Toxic emission from industry and other sources may contain greenhouse gases.
Therefore some sources of pollution contribute to global warming. 
Unlike global warming, where the negative effects are evolutionary and solutions elusive,
the effects of pollution are immediate and deadly, and the solutions are well-known and available.