135 million premature deaths possibly linked

Researchers in Singapore have found that worsening air pollution as a result of climate change could be linked to a jump in premature deaths in Asia let’s get more analysis. I’m joined by two of the studies authors from the nanyang Technological University associate professor Steve IM from the Asian school of the environment and Leong Chan school of medicine as well as Professor Joseph s senior vice president of health and life sciences and Dean of the Lee Kong Chen School of medicine welcome gentlemen first to you uh Professor y. I
was curious you’ve actually uh analyzed your team analyzed 40 Years of data how has the pollution rate and the corresponding premature deaths how has that changed over the years we look at you the data from 1980 to 2020 that 41 years then we see the increasing trend of the PM 2.

Addressing the Silent Crisis: 135 Million Premature Deaths Possibly Linked to Environmental Factors

5 globally and uh in some of the continents including Asia and the corresponding health impact we also see a obvious increasing trend for different kind of disease including uh the uh Asma COPD Etc so this is what what we find uh very important uh the signal of the urgency that we should mitigate the air pollution problem not only in one country but globally so this this is a problem that doesn’t have borders and is clearly getting worse um Prof song Maybe I bring you in here are the deaths occurring more for or groups that are vulnerable to this High PM 2.5 we
mentioned earlier these groups could be the elderly could be the extremely young those with existing respiratory issues well there are two types of problems one come immediately after exposure to the air pollutants and this is mostly uh related to lung diseases such as asthma or chronic lung diseases uh and these are the disease that can affect usually uh the younger people or the elderly uh people who have um underlying uh lung diseases and when they get exposed to air pollution uh the symptoms will get worse on the other hand um there are
people who with long post exposure to pollution they may even get um heart diseases or stroke or in some cases lung cancer this is a lung cancer which is not related to Tobacco usage and therefore we are seeing more and more people who have never been smoking particularly females that might get this disease and the the trend seems to be rising over the past decades right okay uh Prof Yim you know the study also found out on top of what uh we have just talked about that climate patterns can make obviously pollution worse it sounds
like we’re in for quite a ride because climate change is becoming uh you know uh more and more uh prevalent M so uh on top of the climate change we also the air quality affected by the electro variation of the climate like the what we are very familiar with theal indianan dipole so what we find in our study is given to the emission from our human M like the activities but we also are affected by the changes of climate in the electral process so we see that when we have the lineal and posessive phase of Indian Ocean dipole the transboundary
hze is particularly serious in our region here so that why we uh this study can give us a scientific evidence that how we should tackle the air pollution problem due to this kind of climate phenomenon I understand it gives that added argument already profs what about yourself you had you did a previous study in 2021 uh I believe it’s also linked increasing air pollution to AR rise in certain types of lung cancers as you mentioned due to the rise in what’s been called black carbon and S F at emissions what are they and are they as
deadly as pm2.5 mhm well in fact it was a study that did by the both of us together and we found that uh black carbon as well as certain type of particulate matters will stimulate um changes in the lung and as I mentioned a particular type of lung cancer which we call adinal carcinoma uh seems to be rising on the global Trend and this is is uh quite alarming because uh we used to attribute lung cancer to Tobacco usage but now even people who never smoke and we found that in uh some population uh particularly in women uh
they seems to be more susceptible to the disease and therefore adinal carcinoma in some countries has already superseded the usual type of lung cancer that we know of which is called sell carcinoma uh so it sounds like it’s equally as dangerous as the PM 2.5 particles that that we’ve been talking about right um Prof can we zoom in into Singapore MH uh NTU uh has talked about working on a Singapore Focus study uh in in the coming months how how far along are you in this study and how would a Singapore.

The Environmental Link to Premature Deaths

Specific study then help us with the way we manage our air quality strategies has it started under the support of the funding from Moe so we uh launched the program called climate transformation program which is tarting to uh understand how climate change impact to the different part of the society including biod diversity finances so one of the clust is focusing on how climate change will impact on the human health in this study here we would like to understand how the air pollution would change given to the uh uh influence of
climate change in the air in the Singapore context so we are going to look at at the more like detail level down to the road side uh like the air pollution issue to see how the exposure as well as the health effects due to the exposure to the roadside air quality well that sounds really interesting is there a time projection when you know you might get some first results so uh so uh we just start in the uh December last year so we are looking forward to probably the end of this year or ear day of next year we will have some of the

Chemical Exposure:

it’s important to know which particular type of uh air poll UT causes what kind of disease and therefore we can try to mitigate the production of such pollutants for example uh we have talked a lot about PM 2.5 or pm10 but there are reason study which show that even ozone has some harmful effect on humans so our study is not just to look at how many people being affected but what kind of pollutants are more harmful than the others and and that’s easier to do in a in a small country like Singapore perhaps uh that’s true but uh if we find
out the source of such pollutant then we’ll be able to control it exactly but profs just to stay with you um in terms of the kind of res resources the kind of strategies that Singapore needs uh to create the right policies but also for its Health Care system to develop um what do we need in our health care System to handle the demands that the pollution related illnesses are going to bring about I think there are two steps that we can talk about first of all with the help of our health scientist which give us warning that okay maybe next

Air Pollution:

week or next month there will be a hazard uh coming to Singapore or to this region because of air pollution then we should Implement some preventive measure for example limiting outdoor activities right school children maybe uh try to avoid uh uh unnecessary outdoor uh um exposure elderly people how do we re protect them and so on so that is on the prev side in the healthcare system if there is really a serious uh Hazard coming along we should perhaps prepare some search capacity in the clinics or in the hospital so that when people. Who

Water and Sanitation
develop this respiratory symptoms or cardiovascular uh problems come to the hospital uh we will have enough people and and also space to uh look after them right and and perhaps even a road map to know where to look and what to look for as well that actually well uh air pollution usually cover a fairly large area but in cases where we we notice that for example last year in North America there were quite a number of forest fire and in those particular region especially at the border of the fire then the preparation needs to be
more intense different yeah all right I appreciate that and I appreciate both you gentlemen coming in to speak with us with me today I was speaking with associate professor Steve Yim as well as Professor Joseph s from the national Technological University thank you gentlemen.