An estimated 63,600 deaths were attributable to air pollution in the United States in 2021. The annual number of deaths attributable to air pollution in the United States has dropped significantly since 1990. The decline in deaths has coincided with improved air quality, with PM2.5 levels in the U.S. falling more than 40 percent since the turn of the century.

United States US: Mortality Rate Attributed to Household and Ambient Air Pollution: Age-standardized: Male data was reported at 17.000 NA in 2016. United States US: Mortality Rate Attributed to Household and Ambient Air Pollution: Age-standardized: Male data is updated yearly, averaging 17.000 NA from Dec 2016 (Median) to 2016, with 1 observations. United States US: Mortality Rate Attributed to Household and Ambient Air Pollution: Age-standardized: Male data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United States – Table US.World Bank.WDI: Health Statistics. Mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution is the number of deaths attributable to the joint effects of household and ambient air pollution in a year per 100,000 population. The rates are age-standardized. Following diseases are taken into account: acute respiratory infections (estimated for all ages); cerebrovascular diseases in adults (estimated above 25 years); ischaemic heart diseases in adults (estimated above 25 years); chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in adults (estimated above 25 years); and lung cancer in adults (estimated above 25 years).; ; World Health Organization, Global Health Observatory Data Repository (http://apps.who.int/ghodata/).; Weighted average;

Death rates attributable to air pollution in the United States were estimated at 9.1 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021. This was well below the global average death rate that year of 100 per 100,000 people. Death rates linked to air pollution in the U.S. have fallen by almost 70 percent since 1990.

China and India saw the largest number of air pollution-related deaths worldwide in 2021, with more than *********** recorded in each. Together, the world's two most populous countries accounted for approximately ** percent of global deaths from diseases linked to air pollution that year. Health effects of air pollution There are a number of health impacts linked to air pollution. These range from milder symptoms like sore throats and irritated eyes, to more serious effects that increase the risk of premature mortality, including strokes, heart disease, and lung cancer. Where is air pollution highest? In 2024, the world's most polluted countries based on PM2.5 concentrations were Chad, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, with average levels in each country more than ** times above World Health Organization (WHO) recommended guidelines. Although India ranked fifth that year, it was still home to ** of the ** most polluted cities in the world in 2024.

United States US: Mortality Rate Attributed to Household and Ambient Air Pollution: Age-standardized: Female data was reported at 10.000 NA in 2016. United States US: Mortality Rate Attributed to Household and Ambient Air Pollution: Age-standardized: Female data is updated yearly, averaging 10.000 NA from Dec 2016 (Median) to 2016, with 1 observations. United States US: Mortality Rate Attributed to Household and Ambient Air Pollution: Age-standardized: Female data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United States – Table US.World Bank.WDI: Health Statistics. Mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution is the number of deaths attributable to the joint effects of household and ambient air pollution in a year per 100,000 population. The rates are age-standardized. Following diseases are taken into account: acute respiratory infections (estimated for all ages); cerebrovascular diseases in adults (estimated above 25 years); ischaemic heart diseases in adults (estimated above 25 years); chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in adults (estimated above 25 years); and lung cancer in adults (estimated above 25 years).; ; World Health Organization, Global Health Observatory Data Repository (http://apps.who.int/ghodata/).; Weighted average;

In 2021, there were more than 250 thousand deaths attributable to air pollution in Latin America and the Caribbean. Brazil was the country with the largest number of deaths, at approximately 68 thousand. Mexico followed, with slightly over 50 thousand deaths. An invisible killer among Brazilians In Brazil, fine-particle outdoor pollution (PM2.5) – meaning particles with a diameter smaller than 2.5 micrometers – typically accounts for more than 70 percent of air pollution-related deaths due to air pollution. In its fine form, particulate matter has been credited as a leading cause of respiratory-related diseases, the third most prominent cause of death among Brazilians. Coal and waste burning, industrial activities, and heavy vehicular traffic are some of the main causes of ambient air pollution. The burden of fuel burning Although Brazil and Mexico have the highest death tolls due to air pollution in Latin America – a result not entirely unexpected give they have the largest populations in the region – they do not necessarily have the region's highest urban pollution levels. Instead, Chile had some of the most polluted cities in Latin America in 2023. These high levels have been mostly ascribed to a cultural tradition of wood-fired cooking. A similar situation can be found in Haiti. In 2023, the Caribbean country – which ranked fourth in deaths due to air pollution in Latin America, despite not even making it to the top ten in terms of population – has by far the largest share of population exposed to household air pollution from solid fuels in the region.

Abstract

Title: Annual PM2.5 and cardiovascular mortality rate data: Trends modified by county socioeconomic status in 2,132 US counties

Abstract: Data on county socioeconomic status for 2,132 US counties and each county’s average annual cardiovascular mortality rate (CMR) and total PM2.5 concentration for 21 years (1990-2010). County CMR, PM2.5, and socioeconomic data were obtained from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Community Multiscale Air Quality modeling system, and the U.S. Census, respectively. A socioeconomic index was created using seven county-level measures from the 1990 US census using factor analysis. Quintiles of this index were used to generate categories of county socioeconomic status.

Usage

This dataset is associated with the following publication: Wyatt, L., G. Peterson, T. Wade, L. Neas, and A. Rappold. The contribution of improved air quality to reduced cardiovascular mortality: Declines in socioeconomic differences over time. ENVIRONMENT INTERNATIONAL. Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS, 136: 105430, (2020).

United States US: Mortality Rate Attributed to Household and Ambient Air Pollution: per 100,000 Population data was reported at 13.300 Ratio in 2016. United States US: Mortality Rate Attributed to Household and Ambient Air Pollution: per 100,000 Population data is updated yearly, averaging 13.300 Ratio from Dec 2016 (Median) to 2016, with 1 observations. United States US: Mortality Rate Attributed to Household and Ambient Air Pollution: per 100,000 Population data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s USA – Table US.World Bank: Health Statistics. Mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution is the number of deaths attributable to the joint effects of household and ambient air pollution in a year per 100,000 population. The rates are age-standardized. Following diseases are taken into account: acute respiratory infections (estimated for all ages); cerebrovascular diseases in adults (estimated above 25 years); ischaemic heart diseases in adults (estimated above 25 years); chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in adults (estimated above 25 years); and lung cancer in adults (estimated above 25 years).; ; World Health Organization, Global Health Observatory Data Repository (http://apps.who.int/ghodata/).; Weighted average;

Age-adjusted mortality rates for the contiguous United States in 2000–2005 were obtained from the Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research system of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2015). Age-adjusted mortality rates were weighted averages of the age-specific death rates, and they were used to account for different age structures among populations (Curtin and Klein 1995). The mortality rates for counties with < 10 deaths were suppressed by the CDC to protect privacy and to ensure data reliability; only counties with ≥ 10 deaths were included in the analyses. The underlying cause of mortality was specified using the World Health Organization’s International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (10th revision; ICD-10). In this study, we focused on the all-cause mortality rate (A00-R99) and on mortality rates from the three leading causes: heart disease (I00-I09, I11, I13, and I20-I51), cancer (C00-C97), and stroke (I60- I69) (Heron 2013). We excluded mortality due to external causes for all-cause mortality, as has been done in many previous studies (e.g., Pearce et al. 2010, 2011; Zanobetti and Schwartz 2009), because external causes of mortality are less likely to be related to environmental quality. We also focused on the contiguous United States because the numbers of counties with available cause-specific mortality rates were small in Hawaii and Alaska. County-level rates were available for 3,101 of the 3,109 counties in the contiguous United States (99.7%) for all-cause mortality; for 3,067 (98.6%) counties for heart disease mortality; for 3,057 (98.3%) counties for cancer mortality; and for 2,847 (91.6%) counties for stroke mortality. The EQI includes variables representing five environmental domains: air, water, land, built, and sociodemographic (2). The _domain-specific indices include both beneficial and detrimental environmental factors. The air _domain includes 87 variables representing criteria and hazardous air pollutants. The water _domain includes 80 variables representing overall water quality, general water contamination, recreational water quality, drinking water quality, atmospheric deposition, drought, and chemical contamination. The land _domain includes 26 variables representing agriculture, pesticides, contaminants, facilities, and radon. The built _domain includes 14 variables representing roads, highway/road safety, public transit behavior, business environment, and subsidized housing environment. The sociodemographic environment includes 12 variables representing socioeconomics and crime. This dataset is not publicly accessible because: EPA cannot release personally identifiable information regarding living individuals, according to the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This dataset contains information about human research subjects. Because there is potential to identify individual participants and disclose personal information, either alone or in combination with other datasets, individual level data are not appropriate to post for public access. Restricted access may be granted to authorized persons by contacting the party listed. It can be accessed through the following means: Human health data are not available publicly. EQI data are available at: https://edg.epa.gov/data/Public/ORD/NHEERL/EQI. Format: Data are stored as csv files. This dataset is associated with the following publication: Jian, Y., L. Messer, J. Jagai, K. Rappazzo, C. Gray, S. Grabich, and D. Lobdell. Associations between environmental quality and mortality in the contiguous United States 2000-2005. ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Research Triangle Park, NC, USA, 125(3): 355-362, (2017).

Annual emissions of various air pollutants in the United States have experienced dramatic reductions over the past half a century. As of 2024, emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) had reduced by more than ** percent since 1970 to *** million tons. Sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emissions have also fallen dramatically in recent decades, dropping from ** million tons to *** million tons between 1990 and 2024. Air pollutants can pose serious health hazards to humans, with the number of air pollution related deaths in the U.S. averaging ****** a year.

Dataset contains information on New York City air quality surveillance data. Air pollution is one of the most important environmental threats to urban populations and while all people are exposed, pollutant emissions, levels of exposure, and population vulnerability vary across neighborhoods. Exposures to common air pollutants have been linked to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and premature deaths. These indicators provide a perspective across time and NYC geographies to better characterize air quality and health in NYC. Data can also be explored online at the Environment and Health Data Portal: http://nyc.gov/health/environmentdata.

Air quality in the United States has dramatically improved, yet exposure to air pollution is still associated with 100000–200000 deaths annually. Reducing the number of deaths effectively, efficiently, and equitably relies on attributing them to specific emission sources, but so far, this has been done for only highly aggregated groups of sources, or a select few sources of interest. Here, we estimate mortality in the United States attributable to all domestic, human-caused emissions of primary PM2.5 and secondary PM2.5 precursors. We present detailed source-specific attributions in four alternate groupings relevant for identifying promising ways to reduce mortality. We find that nearly half of the deaths can be attributed to just five activities, all in different sectors. Around half of the deaths can be attributed to fossil fuel combustion, with the remainder attributable to combustion of nonfossil fuels, agricultural processes, and other noncombustion processes. Both primary and secondary PM2.5 are important, including PM2.5 from currently unregulated precursor pollutants such as ammonia. We suggest improvements in air quality can be realized by continued reductions of emissions from traditionally important sources and by novel strategies for reducing emissions from sources of emerging relative importance and research focus. Such changes can contribute to improved health outcomes and other environmental goals.

We conducted an unmatched case-control study of 1,225,285 infants from a North Carolina Birth Cohort (2003-2015). Ozone and PM2.5 during critical exposure periods (gestational weeks 3-8) were estimated using residential address and a national spatiotemporal model at census tract centroid. Here we describe data sources for outcome (i.e., congenital heart defects) and exposure (i.e., ozone and PM2.5) data. This dataset is not publicly accessible because: EPA cannot release personally identifiable information regarding living individuals, according to the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This dataset contains information about human research subjects. Because there is potential to identify individual participants and disclose personal information, either alone or in combination with other datasets, individual level data are not appropriate to post for public access. Restricted access may be granted to authorized persons by contacting the party listed. It can be accessed through the following means: The North Carolina Birth Cohort data are not publicly available as it contains personal identifiable information. Data may be requested through the NCDHHS, Division of Public Health with proper approvals. Air pollutant concentrations for ozone and PM2.5 from the national spatiotemporal model are publicly available from EPA's website. Format: Birth certificate data from the State Center for Health Statistics of the NC Department of Health and Human Services linked with data from the Birth Defects Monitoring Program (NC BDMP) to create a birth cohort of all infants born in NC between 2003-2015. The NC BDMP is an active surveillance system that follows NC births to obtain birth defect diagnoses up to 1 year after the date of birth as well as identify infant deaths during the first year of life and include relevant information from the death certificate. A national spatiotemporal model provided data on predicted ozone PM2.5 concentrations over critical prenatal and time periods. The prediction model used data from research and regulatory monitors as well as a large (>200) array of geographic covariates to create fine scale spatial and temporal predictions. The model has a cross-validated R2 of 0.89 for PM2.5. Concentrations were predicted for daily throughout the study period at the centroid of each 2010 census tract in NC. This dataset is associated with the following publication: Arogbokun, O., T. Luben, J. Stingone, L. Engel, C. Martin, and A. Olshan. Racial disparities in maternal exposure to ambient air pollution during pregnancy and prevalence of congenital heart defects. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 194(3): 709-721, (2025).

Annual mortality rates for US counties, air pollution concentrations. This dataset is not publicly accessible because: EPA cannot release personally identifiable information regarding living individuals, according to the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This dataset contains information about human research subjects. Because there is potential to identify individual participants and disclose personal information, either alone or in combination with other datasets, individual level data are not appropriate to post for public access. Restricted access may be granted to authorized persons by contacting the party listed. It can be accessed through the following means: Please contact corresponding author. Format: Data is saved in Ascii and netcdf format. This dataset is associated with the following publication: Peterson, G., C. Hogrefe, L. Neas, A. Corrigan, R. Mathur, and A. Rappold. Impacts of Reductions in Emissions from Major Source Sectors on Fine Particulate Matter-Related Cardiovascular Mortality. ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Research Triangle Park, NC, USA, 128(1): 17005, (2020).

We conducted a systematic review/meta-analysis for epidemiologic evidence of the association between long-term criteria air pollution (nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), coarse particulate matter (PM10), fine particulate matter (PM2.5), ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO)) exposure and all-cause, respiratory, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) infant mortality. This dataset is associated with the following publications: Wilkie, A., A. Krajewski, F. Njie, K. Park, S. Zelasky, K. Rappazzo, and T. Luben. Long-term exposure to criteria air pollutants and infant mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HYGIENE AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH. Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS, 267: 114587, (2025). Luben, T., A. Wilkie, A. Krajewski, F. Njie, K. Park, S. Zelasky, and K. Rappazzo. Systematic Review of Short-term Air Pollution Exposure and Infant Mortality. Presented at International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) - North American Chapter, Corvallis, OR, USA, 06/19/2023 - 06/22/2023.

Excel workbook of age-standardised baseline mortality rates (BMRs) for each US county by race and ethnicity used for calculating racial-ethnic disparities in health burdens for air pollution from the major oil and gas lifecycle stages in the United States.The workbook includes 3 sheets:BMRs for all-cause mortality in 25+ years population for calculating premature mortality from exposure to fine particular matter (PM2.5).BMRs for all-cause mortality in 65+ years population for calculating premature mortality from exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), andBMRs for all-ages chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) mortality from exposure to ozone air pollution.Raw BMRs from the US US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) are processed to gap fill data not reported at the county level. This data gap filling is detailed in Vohra et al. (2025) Science Advances, "The health burden and racial-ethnic disparities of air pollution from the major oil and gas lifecycle stages in the United States", doi:10.1126/sciadv.adu2241.

Energy generation was the largest contributor to particulate matter (PM2.5) attributable deaths in the United States in 2021, at 7,568. Meanwhile, just over 7,000 deaths were linked to PM2.5 from industries.

Air pollution globalization, as a combined effect of atmospheric transport and international trade, can lead to notable transboundary health impacts. Life expectancy reduction attribution analysis of transboundary pollution can reveal the effect of pollution globalization on the lives of individuals. This study coupled five state-of-the-art models to link the regional per capita life expectancy reduction to cross-boundary pollution transport attributed to consumption in other regions. Our results revealed that pollution due to consumption in other regions contributed to a global population-weighted PM2.5 concentration of 9 μg/m3 in 2017, thereby causing 1.03 million premature deaths and reducing the global average life expectancy by 0.23 year (≈84 days). Trade-induced transboundary pollution relocation led to a significant reduction in life expectancy worldwide (from 5 to 155 days per person), and even in the least polluted regions, such as North America, Western Europe, and Russia, a 12–61-day life expectancy reduction could be attributed to consumption in other regions. Our results reveal the individual risks originating from air pollution globalization. To protect human life, all regions and residents worldwide should jointly act together to reduce atmospheric pollution and its globalization as soon as possible.

ObjectivesThis study aims to estimate the short-term preventable mortality and associated economic costs of complying with the World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines (AQGs) limit values for PM10 and PM2.5 in nine major Latin American cities.MethodsWe estimated city-specific PM-mortality associations using time-series regression models and calculated the attributable mortality fraction. Next, we used the value of statistical life to calculate the economic benefits of complying with the WHO AQGs limit values.ResultsIn most cities, PM concentrations exceeded the WHO AQGs limit values more than 90% of the days. PM10 was found to be associated with an average excess mortality of 1.88% with concentrations above WHO AQGs limit values, while for PM2.5 it was 1.05%. The associated annual economic costs varied widely, between US$ 19.5 million to 3,386.9 million for PM10, and US$ 196.3 million to 2,209.6 million for PM2.5.ConclusionOur findings suggest that there is an urgent need for policymakers to develop interventions to achieve sustainable air quality improvements in Latin America. Complying with the WHO AQGs limit values for PM10 and PM2.5 in Latin American cities would substantially benefits for urban populations.

Brazil is the Latin American and Caribbean country with the highest number of deaths that can be attributed to household air pollution from fossil fuels. In 2019, approximately ****** deaths were caused by this type of household air pollution in Brazil. Haiti was the second country in the region with the highest number of estimated casualties, with ******, followed by Mexico with almost 10,000.