Killer air: Pollution scare in southeast Asia

The haze that has shrouded parts of southeast Asia this month is just one visible element of a much larger problem that kills hundreds of thousands of people in the region every year, the World Health Organisation said.

Air pollution in major southeast Asian and Chinese cities ranks among the worst in the world and contributes to the deaths of about 500,000 people annually, said Michal Krzyzanowski, an air quality specialist at the WHO’s European Centre for Environment and Health in Bonn, Germany.