<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/dirty-air-global-trade-kills-home-abroad-46451079" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/dirty-air-global-trade-kills-home-abroad-46451079</a><o:p class=""></o:p></div><h1 style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 24pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Dirty air from global trade kills at home and abroad<o:p class=""></o:p></h1><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span class="by-text">By</span> seth borenstein, ap science writer<o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span class="timestamp">WASHINGTON — Mar 29, 2017, 2:15 PM ET</span><o:p class=""></o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span class="credit">The Associated Press</span><o:p class=""></o:p></div><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class=""><a name="lpos=widget[share_facebook_widget]&lid=l" class=""></a>A study that measures the human toll of <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/environment/air-pollution.htm" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">air pollution</a> from global manufacturing and trade shows how buying goods made far away can lead to premature deaths both there and close to home.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">More than 750,000 people die prematurely from dirty air every year that is generated by making goods in one location that will be sold elsewhere, about one-fifth of the 3.45 million premature deaths from air pollution. The study says 12 percent of those deaths, about 411,000 people, are a result of air pollution that has blown across national borders.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">"It's not a local issue anymore," said study co-author Dabo Guan, an economist at the University of East Anglia in England. "It requires global cooperation."<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">It has long been known that that the environmental burden of manufacturing often falls heaviest on countries where companies set up shop to take advantage of low labor costs and relatively loose environmental regulations. But this is the first study to bring together economic, manufacturing, trade, atmospheric and health data to calculate the number and location of premature deaths from air pollution.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">It found that people in Western Europe buying goods made elsewhere were linked to 173,000 overseas air pollution deaths a year, while United States consumption was linked to just over 100,000 deaths, according to the study published in Wednesday's journal<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">Nature.</a><o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">What that looks like in China: 238,000 deaths a year associated with production of goods that are bought or consumed elsewhere. That number is 106,000 deaths in India and 129,000 deaths in the rest of Asia.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">"We have a role in the quality of the air in those areas," study co-author Steven Davis, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Irvine, said in an interview. "We're taking advantage of our positon as consumers, distant consumers."<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Still, the study says three-quarters of the 1 million air pollution deaths in China — and the nearly half a million deaths in India — are from production of goods that are consumed locally.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">China and India also have pollution that travels elsewhere and kills between 65,000 and 75,000 people in other countries, the study said. India's migrating pollution kills more because China's pollution, which hits Japan and <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/south-korea.htm" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">South Korea</a>, often heads over the Pacific Ocean where its effects dissipate over the <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/topics/entertainment/music/miles-davis.htm" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">miles, Davis</a> said. India's pollution heads directly to more populous neighboring countries.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">The study starts by looking at the 3.45 million deaths a year that this and other studies say are triggered by tiny airborne particles often called soot or smog. About 2.5 million of those deaths are associated with making and consuming of goods, including the energy needed to produce and ship them. The rest are due to natural factors like dust and fires and other causes that can't be tracked, said study lead author Qiang Zhang, an atmospheric chemist at Tsinghua University in Beijing.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Like smoking, air pollution increases the risk of getting diseases like heart disease and stroke, said study co-author Michael Brauer, a public health professor at the University of British Columbia. Using well-established methods, researchers calculate death estimates using health statistics, pollution levels, and other factors.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Dr. Howard Frumkin, a former director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now at the University of Washington, was not part of the study, but praised it. He said the calculations done by the study are crucial for understanding the larger problem.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">"This is a moral question as much as a scientific one," Frumkin wrote in an email. "But the scientific approach here — linking data on manufacturing and associated pollution emissions, import and export flows, pollutant movement across national boundaries, and the health impact of pollution exposure — is exactly what's needed."<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Producing more goods locally would change where deaths occur and potentially reduce overall deaths — if local emissions rules are tighter. Bringing back manufacturing to the United States, as President Donald J. Trump and politicians from both parties want, would bring more air pollution deaths to the U.S., but reduce deaths worldwide because pollution laws are stricter, Davis and others said.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Production is likely to remain concentrated in Asia, however, and it will have to be up to those countries to better regulate their own industrial emissions, said Peter Adams, an engineering professor and air pollution expert at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who wasn't part of the study. "Relying on consumer altruism," he said, won't be enough.</p></body></html>