“The past decade has seen some progress toward reducing the toll of air pollution. Overall, the age- standardized death rate attributable to air pollution decreased by 21% from 2013 to 2023. This improvement has been largely driven by a decline in HAP exposures and associated disease burden, while the rates of death linked to PM2.5 and ozone have increased…

Air pollution’s burden of disease does not fall evenly across age groups. Throughout the world, children and older people are most severely affected. In 2023, nearly 5 million deaths (95% UI: 3.8–5.7) among people over age 70 were linked to air pollution, with about 3 million (95% UI: 2.6–4.1) related to ambient PM2.5, 1 million (95% UI: 900,000–2 million) to HAP, and 300,000 (95% UI: 81,000–588,000) to ozone. The toll of air pollution is likely to increase in the coming   populations age.”

From State of Global Air.