How Does Air Pollution Affect Humans?

You breathe about 8 liters of air every minute So it’s pretty important that the air is clean. But often it is not.

You breathe about 8 liters of air every minute

The air you breathe

You breathe about 11,000 liters of air every day. That's nearly 8 liters every minute and more than 300 million liters over a lifetime. But have you thought about what's in the air?

…is not all that clean

The air you breathe contains lead, arsenic, mercury, benzene, dioxins, cadmium, to name a few of the things that are not good for you.

Air Pollution cuts off 20 months of your life and is nearly as deadly as tobacco. Air pollution causes 8.9 million deaths each year and has been called the world’s worst environmental health risk by the UN.

The consequences of breathing polluted air

The negative effects of air pollution might have been grossly underestimated. About 4 percent of deaths in the United States, and more than 10 percent of lung cancer in Europe, is caused by urban air pollution. In 2030, premature deaths from lung cancer are projected to be multiplied by 4.