Today we're going to look at the growing awareness of air pollution in your city and everywhere else and its relationship outrage and optimism.

My name's Tom Riveik Karnak. I'm

Paul deaconak. I'm Christina Figuero and I'm Paul Dickinson.

Today we ask why the world has been so slow to wake up to the public health

epidemic that is air pollution. We look at how the issue of

air pollution can change the politics around climate change and we talk to Dr

Arvin Kumar, distinguished pulmonary surgeon for 30 years in New Delhi who has seen firsthand the impacts of what we're doing to the planet and what it does to the human lungs.

Thanks for being here. So today we're going to talk about air pollution and we seem to be approaching a

moment of collective awakening on air pollution as the world appears to be

realizing the enormity of the impact on human

health and it is not a moment too soon.

This year as last year, 7 million people will die prematurely because of air pollution and that is three times

the number of people who die each year from AIDS tuberculosis and malaria combined.

600,000 of those affected their children,

the vast majority of them under the age of five,

and this equates to a young child dying of an illness caused by air pollution

every single minute.

Nine out of ten people on earth are at risk of asthma, cancer, heart disease, strokes, dementia, cognitive

dysfunction simply by breathing.

Now we know exactly what's causing this, of course.

Apart from a relatively smaller proportion,

although significant in some parts of the world

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