As I was returning from my son’s football practice today, I noticed a news feed across my phone that declared, “1 in 6 Deaths on the Planet are Linked to Pollution”. I thought to myself, how shocking, and my second thought was how sad. We are destroying our environment and the result is that we are killing ourselves in the process.
When I sat down to write this blog post I googled to find that news story and I was not surprised to see that it was reported by all of the major outlets including BBC, CNBC, and PBS to name a few. They were all reporting new findings according to The Lancet Commission on pollution and health that was recently published October 19.
According to the Lancet Commission report:
“Pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and premature death in the world today. Diseases caused by pollution were responsible for an estimated 9 million premature deaths in 2015—16% of all deaths worldwide—three times more deaths than from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined and 15 times more than from all wars and other forms of violence. In the most severely affected countries, pollution-related disease is responsible for more than one death in four” (1).
“But the commission found deaths due to modern pollutants — in the air, water and soil, such as motor vehicle exhaust fumes during rush-hour traffic or industrial waste that seeps into water supplies — are on the rise” (2).
Modern pollution is created from chemicals, exhausts and fumes as opposed to the traditional wood burning stoves, fireplaces and dirty water.
For the big picture, we should all try to do our part to save the planet, such as paying attention to how we handle our waste and how we source our energy needs. On the very personal level, though, we should learn how to manage the pollution that we absorb into our own bodies and we should encourage our friends and family to do the same if we want to live longer and have a better quality of life.
One way that we can manage our personal toxin levels is to incorporate an infrared fitness routine into our weekly schedules. HOTWORX has developed 10 infrared workouts that can help to manage the toxin overloads that we are all exposed to from the food we eat, the liquids we drink and the air that we breathe on a daily basis.
Sweat it out!
