Pollution Causes More Deaths Than COVID-19, UN Expert: Current Management Approach Is Clearly Failing

Garbage illustration. (Pexels/Tom Fisk)

JAKARTA - Pollution by states and companies is contributing to more deaths globally than COVID-19, a UN environmental report published on Tuesday said, calling for "immediate and ambitious action" to ban some toxic chemicals.

The report says pollution from pesticides, plastics and e-waste causes widespread human rights abuses, as well as at least 9 million premature deaths per year, and that these problems are largely ignored.

To illustrate, the coronavirus pandemic has caused nearly 5.9 million deaths, according to data aggregator Worldometer.

"Current approaches to managing the risks posed by pollution and toxic substances are clearly failing, resulting in widespread violations of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment," the report's author, UN Special Rapporteur David Boyd, concluded.

Due to be presented next month to the UN Human Rights Council, which has declared a clean environment a human right, the document was posted on the Council's website on Tuesday.

Garbage illustration. (Pexels/Tom Fisk)

The report urges a ban on polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl, man-made substances used in household products, such as non-stick cookware that have been linked to cancer, dubbed "forever chemicals" because they are non-perishable.

It also recommends cleaning of polluted sites and, in extreme cases, possible relocation of affected communities, many of them poor, marginalized and indigenous, from so-called 'sacrifice zones'.

The term, originally used to describe a nuclear test zone, was expanded in the report to include highly contaminated sites or places that are uninhabitable by climate change.

To note, UN Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet has named environmental threats as the biggest global rights challenge, with a growing number of climate and environmental justice cases successfully demanding human rights.