DECRYPTION – The reality behind the mortality figures is more complex than it appears.
“A death in five in the world is linked to air pollution. “” Air pollution causes nearly 100,000 premature deaths per year in France. ” “More than 40,000 dead each year attributable to air pollution in France ”… It has become a sad litany: the heavy price paid by the populations to pollution is regularly displayed in the media.
But, apart from the fact that they vary significantly from one study to another, these massive figures can be dubious. Indeed, who can say that he knows a person who died of air pollution? The lethality of pollution is obviously much more complex and multifactorial than that linked to road accidents, or to a heart attack. And yet, the orders of magnitude advanced are quite comparable to the number of deaths caused by tobacco and alcohol, which are not questioned.
Evaluate the health impact
So how do scientists come to estimate the health impact of the pollutants we breathe? “Well
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