New estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO) have suggested that an estimated 12.6 million people have lost their lives due to living or working in an unhealthy environment in 2012, roughly 25% of total death cases globally.

There are many environmental risk factors, including air, water and soil pollution, climate change, ultraviolet radiation, and chemical exposures, and all of them reportedly add to over 100 diseases and injuries.

In a press release, WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, said that a healthy environment leads to a healthy population. She cautioned that in case nations don’t take actions to make environments healthy, then millions of people will get sick and die at an early age.

The report’s second edition, ‘Preventing disease through healthy environments: a global assessment of the burden of disease from environmental risks’ disclosed that since it started getting published about 10 years back, life loss because of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), mainly caused by air pollution, such as exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke, have been responsible for nearly 8.2 million of the deaths.

NCDs, including cancers, stroke, heart disease, and chronic respiratory disease, are presently accountable for roughly two-thirds of the total deaths attributed to unhealthy environment.

Simultaneously, deaths caused by infectious diseases, like malaria and diarrhea mostly linked to poor water, sanitation and waste management, have fallen.

This trend is attributable to increases in availability of safe water and sanitation, beside better immunization, insecticide-treated mosquito nets and necessary medicines.

The report has highlighted cost-effective measures that can be taken by nations to reverse the upward trend of disease and deaths due to unhealthy environment. The measures include decreasing the use of solid fuels in preparing food and by growing the access to low-carbon energy technologies.