Air pollution kills 8.8m people worldwide per yr

PARIS, Mar 12 (AFP): Air pollution causes 790,000 premature deaths every year in Europe and 8.8 million worldwide, doubling recent assessments, according to a study released on Monday.

Between 40 and 80 percent of those excess deaths are caused by heart attacks, strokes and other types of cardiovascular disease underestimated up to now as a driver of smog-related mortality, researchers reported.

On average, a toxic cocktail of pollutants from vehicles, industry and agriculture shortens the lives of those who die prematurely by 2.2 years, they calculated.

"This means that air pollution causes more extra deaths a year than tobacco smoking, which the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates was responsible for an extra 7.2 million deaths in 2015," said senior author Thomas Munzel, a professor at the University Medical Centre Mainz in Germany.

"Smoking is avoidable, but air pollution is not."

The new study, published in the European Heart Journal, focused on Europe.