Not living in a polluted area, still falling sick? Here are 4 reasons why

For someone living in polluted New Delhi, for example, those 20,000 breaths include the equivalent of around 20 grains of table salt worth of particulate matter deposited in their lungs each day

Not a day seems to go by without a story of an “airpocalypse,” usually somewhere in a developing nation. It’s hard not to empathize with the people in the smoggy images of New Delhi or Ulaanbataar or Kathmandu, often wearing masks, walking to school or work through soupy cloudiness.

Last year, a study found that more than 8 million people per year die early from air pollution exposure. This amounts to more deaths than diarrheal disease, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS combined.

As a researcher in air pollution and its health effects, I know that even if you