For comparison, researchers from the British Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution cite the following figures: annually, 24,000 people die in the UK due to poor ecology. Moving from a small town to the polluted center of London can cause much greater harm to health than living in the contaminated exclusion zone around Chernobyl.
Among other negative factors affecting health, the study authors cite obesity and smoking, including passive smoking. According to Jim Smith, a staff member of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the risk of premature death among the Chernobyl population is lower than that of passive smokers or people who are overweight. Experts claim that the lives of those who were within a 1.5 km radius of the nuclear explosion epicenter shortened by an average of 2.6 years.
"The immediate consequences of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki claimed the lives of approximately 210,000 people. However, those who were exposed to the maximum radiation but survived lived on average significantly longer than people who smoke or suffer from severe obesity," commented Smith on the study results.
Experts calculated that on average a heavy smoker lives 10 years less than a non-smoker, and a person who is overweight loses four years of life out of every ten. And with passive smoking, according to experts, the risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases increases by 1.7%. However, Jim Smith notes that these data cannot be considered universal, since the study did not account for many social factors and people's lifestyles, which often have a much stronger impact on health than ecology.
The study also lists what most often kills people. In first place, as expected, is tobacco. The average risk of dying within a year for those who smoke 10 cigarettes a day is 1 in 200. And the rarest cause of death, according to scientists, is accidents on British Airways planes - 1 in 12 million.
In addition, experts name the most risky activities that cause 5 out of 100,000 deaths per year. Among them are driving a car, cycling, and even kayaking. Peanut butter and wine made the blacklist. Lovers of the former risk developing liver cancer if they eat more than 2,000 tablespoons per year. And drinking wine can lead to liver cirrhosis if consumed more than 25 liters annually.
Almost simultaneously with the British scientists, their American colleagues from Duke University in North Carolina published the results of another interesting study. If the conclusions in the report are to be believed, now convinced smokers may have an excellent excuse for their bad habit. Specialists have found that a predisposition to smoking may be genetically determined. If this theory is confirmed, in the near future it will allow individually tailored treatment for those who have tried to quit smoking but could not overcome the addiction.