The global cost of air pollution caused by fossil fuels is $8 billion a day, or roughly 3.3 percent of the entire world's economic output, an environmental research group said recently.
The report from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Greenpeace Southeast Asia is the first to assess the global cost of air pollution specifically from burning oil, gas and coal.
"We found that the China Mainland, the United States and India bear the highest costs from fossil fuel air pollution worldwide, an estimated $900 billion, $600 billion and $150 billion per year, respectively," the report said.
Particles thrown off by fossil fuel usage account for 4.5 million premature deaths each year around the globe, including 1.8 million in China and a million in India, the researchers found.
The new figure is in line with World Health Organization (WHO) estimates of 4.2 million deaths each year linked to ground-level air pollution, mostly from heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and acute respiratory infections in children.
Living in the New Delhi area of India is like smoking 10 cigarettes a day, earlier research has shown.
"Air pollution from fossil fuels is a threat to our health and our economies that takes millions of lives and costs us trillions of dollars," said Minwoo Son, clean air campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia.
The global cost for 2018 was $2.9 trillion, the report estimated.
