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Where’s the Emergency Response to Our Global Public Health Crisis of Pollution?

Pollution isn’t just a local problem; it’s a planetary threat

Sean Youra
Climate Conscious
8 min readJun 13, 2022

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Photo by Ella Ivanescu on Unsplash

The global killer that almost no one is talking about

Back in May of last year, when I wrote the story below about why I left my engineering job in the medical device industry to take on the climate crisis, I said, “the combination of air pollution and climate change-related health effects and mortality is a health crisis that will only become more severe over time, and will threaten to undo the significant medical progress we have made over the past several decades.”

When I wrote that, I referenced a study that estimated that 8.7 million people die prematurely every year due to air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.

The Guardian came out with an article last month that provided an updated estimate on the global premature deaths due to all forms of pollution — 9 million*. This number is based on the recently published Lancet

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Climate Conscious
Climate Conscious

Published in Climate Conscious

Bringing people together from around the world to discuss solutions to the climate crisis and to build a collective vision for a better tomorrow.

Sean Youra
Sean Youra

Written by Sean Youra

Helping local governments decarbonize | Founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Climate Conscious

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