Marc De Ver­teuil

Dur­ing the re­cent Beetham dump fires, which left Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons cloaked in smog, a ra­dio sta­tion called me for a com­men­tary on what I thought the pub­lic should do.My an­swer was the on­ly sen­si­ble thing I could say at the time: "Leave town."I'm not sure if the com­men­tary was ever aired; if it was, then no­body took it se­ri­ous­ly. There was no mass pan­ic and flee­ing from the city, but I strong­ly feel it was the right ad­vice.

Air pol­lu­tion may be the biggest silent killer: New es­ti­mates by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion are that, in 2012, one in eight glob­al deaths was the re­sult of air pol­lu­tion ex­po­sure. That's 7,000,000 peo­ple. Air pol­lu­tion is the world's sin­gle largest en­vi­ron­men­tal health risk.

A di­vi­sion was made be­tween am­bi­ent air pol­lu­tion–that is, out­side air pol­lu­tion–and house­hold air pol­lu­tion. Am­bi­ent air pol­lu­tion caused 3.7 mil­lion deaths, and house­hold air pol­lu­tion 4.3 mil­lion deaths. Air-pol­lu­tion-re­lat­ed deaths are 2,800,000 (40 per cent) from stroke, an­oth­er 2,800,000 (40 per cent) from heart dis­ease, 980,000 (14 per cent) from lung dis­ease and 420,000 (six per cent) from lung can­cer.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers