Danish scientist Ulas Im, along with colleagues from NASA’s Goddard Space Research Institute, predicted how small solid particles released into the air will affect people’s health in the future. They concluded that even in the best-case scenario, up to 4 million people worldwide would die from diseases associated with them.

It is known that the greatest danger to health is solid particles whose dimensions are only a few microns or even tens of nanometers. Thanks to their size, they easily enter the human lungs and adhere to their inner surfaces. This can lead to worsening of breathing and then cause cancer and a host of other serious illnesses.

Together with NASA, Im has developed a global model of air pollution that includes measures to reduce climate change, population composition, and emissions. It depicts a bleak future, especially for Asian countries. The situation with emissions in Europe is not that critical.