研究称环境污染每年造成900万人过早死亡，经济损失达4.6万亿 [美国媒体]

Environmental pollution — from filthy air to contaminated water — is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.

每年死于空气污染和水污染的人数屡创新高，这个数字高过全球战争和暴力致死人数；超过吸烟，饥饿或自然灾害的死亡人数；甚至超过因艾滋病，结核病和疟疾加在一起的死亡人数。

One out of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015 — about 9 million — could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure, according to a major study released Thursday in the Lancet medical journal. The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report says, costing some $4.6 trillion in annual losses — or about 6.2 percent of the global economy.

根据星期四在柳叶刀医学杂志上发布的一项重大研究报告称：2015年世界上每六个早逝患者中就有一人--约900万人--可能死于由环境污染毒素引起的疾病。报告指出，与污染相关的死亡，疾病和福利支出同样庞大，每年亏损约4.6万亿美元，约占全球经济的6.2％。

“There’s been a lot of study of pollution, but it’s never received the resources or level of attention as, say, AIDS or climate change,” said epidemiologist Philip Landrigan, dean of global health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, and the lead author of the report.

“有很多关于污染的研究，但是所获得的资源和受关注程度远不及艾滋病或气候变化，”流行病学家菲利普·兰德里根，西奈山伊坎医学院全球卫生学院院长，纽约和报告的主要作者说。

The report marks the first attempt to pull together data on disease and death caused by all forms of pollution combined.

该报告首次尝试将所有形式污染造成的疾病和死亡数据汇总在一起。

“Pollution is a massive problem that people aren’t seeing because they’re looking at scattered bits of it,” Landrigan said.

兰德里根说：“污染问题是巨大的问题，人们觉得污染不大是因为他们只看见了冰山一角。”

Experts say the 9 million premature deaths the study found was just a partial estimate, and the number of people killed by pollution is undoubtedly higher and will be quantified once more research is done and new methods of assessing harmful impacts are developed.

专家说，研究发现的900万过早死亡只是部分估计，污染致死的人数显然比这个数字还高，只有进行更多研究以及建立评估有害影响的新方法后才能进行量化。

Areas like Sub-Saharan Africa have yet to even set up air pollution monitoring systems. Soil pollution has received scant attention. And there are still plenty of potential toxins still being ignored, with less than half of the 5,000 new chemicals widely dispersed throughout the environment since 1950 having been tested for safety or toxicity.

撒哈拉以南非洲地区甚至还没有建立空气污染监测系统。土壤污染受到也是很少关注。而且仍然有很多潜在的毒素仍然被忽视，自1950年以来，广泛散布在环境中的5000种新化学物质中，只有不到一半数量的化学物质被进行了安全或毒性测试。

“In the West, we got the lead out of the gasoline, so we thought lead was handled. We got rid of the burning rivers, cleaned up the worst of the toxic sites. And then all of those discussions went into the background” just as industry began booming in developing nations, said Richard Fuller, head of the global toxic watchdog Pure Earth and one of the 47 scientists, policy makers and public health experts who contributed to the 51-page report.

“在西方世界，我们从汽油中提取出铅，所以我们认为铅可以被处理了。我们让河流不再燃烧，清理了最恶劣的有毒场所。然后，所有这些关于污染的讨论都变得没了声音。就像发展中国家的工业无声无息地开始蓬勃发展一样，全球毒性监督机构纯净地球的总负责人理查德·富勒（Richard Fuller）也是这个机构里的47位科学家之一，公共卫生政策的决策者之一发出了这51页面报告。

“To some extent these countries look to the West for examples and discussion, and we’d dropped it,” Fuller said.

“这些国家为了寻求帮助会向西方寻求和讨论解决方法和范例，但我们并没有理他们，”富勒说。

Asia and Africa are the regions putting the most people at risk, the study found, while India tops the list of individual countries

研究发现，亚洲和非洲是最危险的地区，而印度则是最污染最严重的国家。

One out of every four premature deaths in India in 2015, or some 2.5 million, was attributed to pollution. China’s environment was the second deadliest, with more than 1.8 million premature deaths, or one in five, blamed on pollution-related illness, the study found.

2015年印度每四个过早死亡中，就有一人的死是由于污染造成的，也就是约250万人。研究发现，中国的环境污染是第二大危险的，超过一百八十万人过早死亡，也就是五分之一。

Several other countries such Bangladesh, Pakistan, North Korea, South Sudan and Haiti also see nearly a fifth of their premature deaths caused by pollution.

其他几个国家，如孟加拉国，巴基斯坦，北朝鲜，南苏丹和海地也有近五分之一的过早死是污染造成的。

Still, many poorer countries have yet to make pollution control a priority, experts say. India has taken some recent actions, such as tightening vehicle and factory emission standards and occasionally limiting the number of cars on New Delhi’s roads. But they have done little about crop burning, garbage fires, construction dust or rampant use of the dirtiest fossil fuels.

专家说，许多较贫穷国家还没有把污染控制放在首位。印度最近采取了一些措施，比如收紧车辆和工厂排放标准，并偶尔限制新德里道路上的汽车数量。但他们对焚烧秸秆、焚烧垃圾、建筑扬尘或大量使用污染最严重的化石燃料所做的努力简直微不足道。

A court ban on firework sales before the Diwali festival didn’t stop New Delhi residents from firing rockets and lighting crackers throughout Thursday night. They awoke Friday morning to acrid, smoke-filled skies and levels of dangerous, lung-clogging particulate matter known as PM2.5 that went beyond 900 parts per million — 90 times the recommended limit by the World Health Organization, and 22 times higher than India’s own limits.

新德里法院在排灯节前颁布的烟花禁令并没能阻止新德里居民在周四晚发射烟花和爆竹。周五早上，当他们醒来时，天空弥漫着辛辣的烟雾，空气中弥漫着危险的、可堵塞肺管的PM2.5颗粒物，超过了世界卫生组织建议限值的90倍，比印度自身的限值高出22倍。

“Even though better pollution norms are coming in, still the pollution levels are continuously increasing,” said Shambhavi Shukla, a research associate with the Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment, which was not involved in the Lancet study.

“尽管有了更好的控制污染标准，但污染水平仍在不断增加，”位于德里的科学与环境中心的研究人员Shambhavi Shukla说，他没有参与《柳叶刀》的研究。

To reach its figures on the overall global pollution burden, the study’s authors used methods outlined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for assessing field data from soil tests, as well as with air and water pollution data from the Global Burden of Disease, an ongoing study run by institutions including the World Health Organization and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

为了收集全球污染负担数据,该研究的作者使用了由美国环境保护署评估数据从土壤测试,以及全球空气和水污染的数据,世界卫生组织和和华盛顿大学健康指标与评估研究所正在共同进行这项研究。

Even the conservative estimate of 9 million pollution-related deaths is one-and-a-half times higher than the number of people killed by smoking, three times the number killed by AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, more than six times the number killed in road accidents, and 15 times the number killed in war or other forms of violence, according to GBD tallies.

据GBD统计，即使是保守估计，污染造成的死亡人数也有900万，是死于吸烟的人数的1.5倍,死于艾滋病、结核病和疟疾的总和数的3倍,交通事故的死亡人数的6倍多,和15倍死于战争或其他形式的暴力的死亡人数。

It is most often the world’s poorest who suffer, the study found. The vast majority of pollution-related deaths — 92 percent — occur in low- or middle-income countries, where policy makers are chiefly concerned with developing their economies, lifting people out of poverty and building basic infrastructure. Environmental regulations in those countries tend to be weaker, and industries lean on outdated technologies and dirtier fuels.

研究发现，世界上最贫穷的人往往受害最深。绝大多数与污染有关的死亡(92%)发生在低收入或中等收入国家，政策制定者主要关心的是发展他们的经济，使人们摆脱贫困，建立基本的基础设施。这些国家的环境法规往往比较薄弱，工业依赖过时的技术和更肮脏的燃料。

In wealthier countries where overall pollution is not as rampant, it is still the poorest communities that are more often exposed, the report says.

报告称，在较富裕的国家，总体污染不那么严重，但仍是最贫穷的国家所遭受的污染最严重。

“What people don’t realize is that pollution does damage to economies. People who are sick or dead cannot contribute to the economy. They need to be looked after” — which is also costly, Fuller said.

“人们没有意识到的是，污染对经济造成了损害。”生病或死亡的人不能为经济做出贡献。他们需要被照顾，这也是昂贵的花费，富勒说。

“There is this myth that finance ministers still live by, that you have to let industry pollute or else you won’t develop,” he said. “It just isn’t true.”

他说:“财政部长们仍然生活在谎言中，先污染再治理，否则你就不会发展。”“这不是真的。”

The report cites EPA research showing that the U.S. has gained some $30 in benefits for every dollar spent on controlling air pollution since 1970, when Congress enacted the Clean Air Act, one of the world’s most ambitious environmental laws. Removing lead from gasoline has earned the U.S. economy another $6 trillion cumulatively since 1980, according to studies by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

这份报告引用了美国环境保护署的一项研究，该研究显示，自1970年美国国会颁布《清洁空气法》以来，美国在控制空气污染上的每一美元都获得了大约30美元的收益。《清洁空气法》是世界上最雄心勃勃的环境保护法之一。根据美国疾病控制与预防中心的研究，从1980年开始，从汽油中去除铅已经为美国经济带来了6万亿美元的收益。

Some experts cautioned, however, that the report’s economic message was murky. Reducing the pollution quantified in the report might impact production, and so would not likely translate into gains equal to the $4.6 trillion in economic losses.

然而，一些专家提醒说，报告的经济信息并不明朗。减少报告中的污染物可能积极影响生产，但却不太可能转化为相当于4.6万亿美元经济损失的收益。

The report “highlights the social and economic justice of this issue,” said Marc Jeuland, associate professor with the Sanford School of Public Policy and the Duke Global Health Institute at Duke University, who was not involved in the study.

该报告“突出了社会和经济正确性问题，”斯坦福大学公共政策学院和杜克大学杜克全球卫生研究所的副教授马克·杰兰德说，他没有参与这项研究。

Jeuland also noted that, while the report counts mortality by each pollutant, there are possible overlaps — for example, someone exposed to both air pollution and water contamination — and actions to address one pollutant may not reduce mortality.

杰兰德还指出，虽然报告统计每一种污染物的死亡率，但可能存在重叠——例如，暴露于空气污染和水污染的人——以及只应对一种污染物的行动可能不会降低死亡率。

“People should be careful not to extrapolate from the U.S. numbers on net (economic) benefits, because the net effects of pollution control will not be equivalent across locations,” he said.

他说:“人们应该小心，不要从美国的净(经济)效益中推断出数字，因为污染控制的净效应在不同的地方不会相等。”

The study’s conclusions on the economic cost of pollution measure lost productivity and health care costs, while also considering studies measuring people’s “willingness to pay” to reduce the probability of dying. While these types of studies yield estimates at best, they are used by many governments and economists trying to understand how societies value individual lives.

该研究最终以生产率损失和医疗成本来衡量污染的经济代价，同时也考虑了衡量人们“愿意支付”以降低死亡概率的研究。尽管这类研究充其量只能得出估计，但是很多政府和经济学家通过这些研究来了解一个社会有多么重视个体生命。

While there has never been an international declaration on pollution, the topic is gaining traction.

虽然从未有过关于污染的国际声明，但这个话题正在获得关注。

The World Bank in April declared that reducing pollution, in all forms, would now be a global priority. And in December, the United Nations will host its first pollution conference.

世界银行今年4月宣布，减少所有形式的污染，将成为全球优先考虑的问题。12月，联合国将主办第一次污染会议。

“The relationship between pollution and poverty is very clear,” said Ernesto Sanchez-Triana, lead environmental specialist at the World Bank. “And controlling pollution would help us address many other problems, from climate change to malnutrition. The linkages can’t be ignored.”

世界银行首席环境专家Ernesto sanchez说:“污染和贫困之间的关系非常清楚。”控制污染将帮助我们解决许多其他问题，比如气候变化和营养不良问题，这些潜在联系我们不能忽视。