Working as one UN for environmental health
Thursday, 2017/01/05 | 08:08:44
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WHO 3 January 2017 – There are many compelling reasons to clean up the global environment. One of the most pressing is that a polluted environment is deadly: every year, 1 in 4 people die from diseases associated with air, water or soil pollution. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and WHO are creating a global mechanism to bring together the environment and health sectors.
There are many compelling reasons why we need to clean up the global environment. One of the most pressing is that a polluted environment is a deadly one. Every year, almost 12.6 million people die from diseases associated with environmental hazards, such as air, water or soil pollution, and climate change. That is one in four deaths worldwide.
We now know that the single greatest environmental risk to human health is through our most basic need – the air that we breathe. For years, governments have struggled to improve access to energy so they can promote economic development. But the largely unsustainable energy path that the world has followed has come at an unacceptable cost. Air pollution, overwhelmingly resulting from energy production and use, causes heart and lung diseases and cancer, resulting in approximately 6.5 million deaths each year.
The energy sources that cause the release of deadly air pollutants, such as black carbon, also release greenhouse gases, including methane and carbon dioxide. Together, these drive climate change, which threatens to undermine all of the environmental conditions on which human lives depend – food, water, and shelter.
See more: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/commentaries/2017/one-un-environmental-health/en/ |
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