Forty percent of deaths worldwide are caused by pollution and other environmental factors, and climate change will make matters worse, scientists say.
After studying population trends, climate change, increasing pollution levels and emerging diseases, 11 graduate student researchers led by Cornell ecology professor David Pimentel concluded: "Life on Earth is killing us."
Increased temperatures caused by global climate change will further encourage growth of human diseases and prod development of new illnesses, they wrote in the October 1998 journal BioScience.
They predicted that millions of people would become "environmental refugees," forced to flee their home areas in a desperate search for food.
"More and more of us are living in crowded urban ecosystems that are ideal for the resurgence of old diseases and the development of new diseases," wrote Pimentel, lead author of the report. "We humans are further stressed--and disease prevalence is worsened--by widespread malnutrition and the unprecedented increase in air, water and soil pollutants."
The researchers concluded: Each year, air pollutants adversely affect the health of 4-5 billion people, and the trend looks likely to worsen, with the number of automobiles growing three times faster than the rate of population growth. Lack of sanitary conditions contributes to 4 million deaths worldwide each year, mostly among infants and young children in developing countries.