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At a Glance In 2015, air pollution caused 8.79 million premature deaths globally.

Natural sources of outdoor air pollution accounted for 3.24 million deaths.

Human-caused sources from fossil fuel emissions accounted for 5.55 million deaths in 2015.

Slashing fossil fuel emissions could save millions of lives cut short each year by diseases linked to air pollution, a new study says.

In 2015, air pollution caused 8.79 million premature deaths globally, according to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). That study built on a previous study, also published in PNAS, that found that natural sources of outdoor air pollution accounted for 3.24 million deaths per year, while human-caused sources from fossil fuel emissions accounted for 5.55 million deaths per year.

Thomas Munzel, co-author of the study and professor in the Department of Cardiology of the University Medical Centre Mainz in Mainz, Germany, said in a press release the number of cardiovascular disease deaths linked to air pollution "is much higher than expected," noting that most estimates had the number of deaths linked to air pollution at 4.5 million in 2015.

"To put this into perspective, this means that air pollution causes more extra deaths a year than tobacco smoking, which the World Health Organization estimates was responsible for an additional 7.2 million deaths in 2015. "Smoking is avoidable but air pollution is not," Munzel said.

"The number of deaths from cardiovascular disease that can be attributed to air pollution is much higher than expected. In Europe alone, the excess number of deaths is nearly 800,000 a year and each of these deaths represents an average reduction in life expectancy of more than two years."

Susan Anenberg of The George Washington University, who was not involved in the study, told Weather Underground “these results of the new study are in line with previous research showing that the global burden of [outdoor fine particles] on mortality could be substantially larger than previously thought, indicating about a doubling of the estimates currently reported by the Global Burden of Disease study.”

The top three nations for human-caused outdoor air pollution deaths are China (2.2 million per year), India (1.1 million per year) and the U.S. (230,000 per year). In the U.S. alone, 84 percent of these deaths can be attributed to fossil fuel emissions.

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The researchers also found that globally, people were dying on average 26.5 years earlier than they would without long-term exposure to air pollutants at a rate of about 120 extra deaths per 100,000.

"The link between air pollution and cardiovascular disease, as well as respiratory diseases, is well established. It causes damage to the blood vessels through increased oxidative stress, which then leads to increases in blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, heart attacks and heart failure," Munzel said.

In addition, the researchers noted the impact slashing fossil fuel emissions would have on climate change.

According to the scientists, global warming would be reduced for a variety of reasons, including less buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This would result in a reduction of regional droughts and fewer extreme “stuck” jet stream patterns.