Study finds that India's polluted air is cutting 660 million lives short

More than half of India's population may be facing a shortened life expectancy due to filthy air, a new study reported by The Associated Press says.

The findings, published on Saturday in the journal Economic & Political Weekly, used a previous study on China's air pollution, in which the authors determined that life expectancy dropped by three years for every 100 micrograms of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, recorded above safe levels. In India, the authors found that 660 million people were breathing in unsafe levels of PM2.5, and losing at least 3.2 years of their lives as a result.

"The extent of the problem is actually much larger than what we normally understand," Anant Sudarshan, one of the study's co-author's and the India director of the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago, said. "We think of it as an urban problem, but the rural dimension has been ignored."

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Thirteen Indian cities now make the World Health Organization's list of the 20 most polluted, but India is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels, and people living in the countryside are affected by industrial plants, regular garbage burning, and the need for diesel to generate electricity.