USA! USA! We’re number one! We’re number one! No, not in freedom. Nope, not in democracy either. No, no, not in public education, and definitely not in public health. But in likelihood to be exposed to poison in the very air itself? Top of the charts baby!!
“Air pollution can harm anyone’s health, but some individuals are more vulnerable than others to its health-related adverse effects,” begins a new report from Healthnews, designed to “identif[y] countries with populations most susceptible to atmospheric pollutants.”
“Researchers analyzed 175 countries,” using the most recent data from leading scientific and environmental research authorities, it explains, “and the results show that four out of seven G7 countries are in the top 50 list, while the U.S. is the most vulnerable of all.”
Wait, that doesn’t sound good at all. What exactly does this report say, anyway? And how did they work it out?
The most vulnerable nation to air pollution: the USA
So, what makes the US’s situation so precarious? Well, not to state the obvious, but a lot of it is because of all the air pollution. It turns out the air in the US is quite a bit worse than you might have thought: research from the American Lung Association recently found that more than one in three Americans live in counties with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution.
But compounding the issue of exposure to air pollution are the chronic respiratory diseases that currently affect more than 35 million Americans – in fact, the country takes the top spot worldwide for chronic respiratory disease prevalence, per the report. These are things like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma, both tightly linked with exposure to air pollution, and both leading causes of respiratory preventable deaths.
It’s partly a vicious cycle, since air pollution is a major risk factor for developing such diseases in the first place. But there are other factors that influence it as well: more than one in nine American adults are smokers, according to the CDC, and that’s also a (if not the) leading cause of respiratory diseases – not to mention cancers such as lung, trachea, and bronchial cancer, for which the US ranks 16th worldwide.
Now, neither of those factors were the weightiest in Healthnews’s calculations. A full one fifth of the rankings came from the proportion of older adults – that is, adults aged 65-plus – who, the report explains, “are at a generally higher risk for adverse air pollution effects due to diminished lung function, weakened immune system, and a high probability of having underlying health conditions or diseases.”
But the US actually fared slightly better on this metric than some other countries lower down the overall rankings. France, for example, came third, for what seems to be two main reasons: first, it has the 10th highest proportion of older adults, with more than one in five French people being over the age of 65; secondly, they play to stereotype, with around one in four being daily smokers.
These two rich and developed nations join Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Sao Tome and Principe, Lebanon, Madagascar, Syria, and Somalia to round out the top 10 countries with the highest vulnerability to air pollution.
The rest of the pack
The reasons for each country’s ranking are diverse. For many of the top ten, war and conflict has been a major driver – and not only because of the inevitably devastating effect on the local healthcare infrastructure. In Lebanon, for example, “economic collapse in 2019 caused an electricity crisis,” the report explains, “which resulted in the increased use of diesel generators, potentially worsening air quality for those already vulnerable to air pollutants”.
In Syria, meanwhile, “more than a decade of civil war and economic decay upended the lives of millions,” it points out, and “high levels of trauma and stress may have a devastating impact on mental health, often leading to the adoption of harmful coping mechanisms like smoking.”
Other factors are specific to each nation. In Yemen, for example, there’s a local habit of chewing khat leaves, a recreational stimulant. That might be driving the nation’s high cardiovascular rates, the report explains. In Madagascar, more than 95 percent of households use biomass fuel every day: “exposure to this fuel may increase the risk of developing respiratory diseases, especially in children,” the report notes, and “with nearly half (48%) of the population being underage, rampant chronic respiratory diseases make Madagascans vulnerable to air pollution.”
But what about the countries further down the list? As you increase the sample, some similarities do start to show up: “Many of the top 50 countries possibly share similar developmental and socio-economical issues,” Healthnews points out. “For instance, over half of the countries […] in the top 50 list have one of the world’s lowest values in the Human Development Index.”
Of course, that’s not the case for the US or France – or the UK, who came in at number 14 and therefore shouldn’t be feeling too smug right about now. But that hints at a subtler point: that the rankings in this report aren’t necessarily the whole story.
Are we boned, then?
It’s important to note that this report has ranked the vulnerability to air pollution – and as it makes clear, that measure “does not necessarily correlate with the level of air pollution in that country.”
“For example, Bangladesh, the world’s most polluted country in 2023, ranks 150th on the susceptibility index,” it points out. “Meanwhile, some vulnerable countries like France and the UK are more socio-economically developed and may have stricter environmental policies.”
Equally, there are factors involved in vulnerability to air pollution that the report either could not or did not include. A country with higher levels of pollution but a more intact healthcare system may fare better, for example; a population with higher incidences of sedentary lifestyles and “diseases of affluence” such as diabetes may fare worse.
Overall, though, it’s not a great outlook for the US. Still, at least in the coming years we can look forward to a beefed-up EPA and soot-free air across the West Coast, right?
Right?
Oh no.
Source Link: The Country Most Vulnerable To Air Pollution Right Now Is... The USA
