Every year, air pollution causes some two million premature deaths in the region, according to a report entitled “Striving for Clean Air: Air Pollution and Public Health in South Asia.”

Large industries, power plants, and vehicles are the main air pollutants across the world, but in South Asia, there are other sources that substantially worsen that problem, experts said.

They are the combustion of solid fuels to cook and heat, the emissions of small industries such as brick kilns, the burning of municipal and agricultural wastes, and cremation.

According to the research, nearly 60 percent of the population in South Asia lives in areas where the concentration of PM2.5 pollutant particles exceeds the level established by the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to the report, air pollution does not disperse evenly in the region, as it is trapped in six large atmospheric basins formed as a result of climatology and geography.

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