A new study led by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry which appeared in the European Heart Journal found that air pollution is now responsible for almost nine million premature deaths every year.
The study's co-author professor Thomas Münzel explained, "To put this into perspective, this means that air pollution causes more extra deaths a year than tôbaccô smôkîng, which the World Health Organization estimates was responsible for an extra 7.2 million deaths in 2015."