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Breathing Easier: Smog kills more Canadians than car accidents, and asthma affects about two million Canadians, many of them children. We can change that. (Children & Health).

Article Excerpt
Few things are as important as the air we breathe. Yet the simple act of breathing is so easy to take for granted -- until something goes wrong.

For many Canadians, air pollution is more than a hazy, brown annoyance, it's a noxious stew that is making us sick and claims thousands of lives every year.

The statistics paint an alarming picture. Canada's Environment Commissioner has said smog kills more Canadians than car accidents, breast cancer, prostate cancer or melanoma. (1) The federal government has said up to 16,000 Canadians die prematurely of smog-related health problems every year. (2) In 1997, the World Health Organization and the World Resources Institute estimated that annually nearly 700,000 deaths are related to air pollution and that about eight million avoidable deaths will occur worldwide by 2020. And it's not just a human toll -- in Ontario alone, smog costs more than one billion dollars a year in hospital admissions, emergency room visits and absenteeism. (3)

Hundreds of reports consistently showing that short- and long-term exposures to air pollution and ozone affect death rates, hospitalizations, complications of asthma and bronchitis, days of work lost, restricted activity days and lung damage in children and adults.

A study by the Ontario Medical Association last year reported that for every death from air pollution -- about 1900 in that province last year -- there are an additional 5.1 hospital admissions, 6.8 emergency room visits and more than 24,000 minor illness days. (4)

Canada has one of the highest asthma rates in the world. Asthma affects about two million Canadians and a...