A study published in the journal Environmental Research found that parts of China, India, Europe, and the northeastern United States are experiencing a disproportionately high number of annual deaths, totaling 8.7 million, attributed to fossil fuels. This new research provides the most detailed assessment to date of premature deaths caused by air pollution from fossil fuels. Previous studies estimated the annual deaths from all outdoor airborne particulate matter, including dust and smoke from agricultural burns and wildfires, at 4.2 million in 2017. Eloise Marais, an expert in atmospheric chemistry at University College London and a co-author of the study, expressed surprise at the large estimate of deaths due to fossil-fuel air pollution. Prior research struggled to differentiate pollution from burning fossil fuels from other sources of harmful particulates like wildfires or dust. The team from three British universities and Harvard University aimed to address the issue by using a high-resolution model to identify the specific pollutants being inhaled in a certain area. They hope their study, which focuses on data from 2018, will encourage governments to speed up the transition to cleaner energy sources due to concerns about the impact of burning fossil fuels on climate change. Co-author Joel Schwartz, an environmental epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, emphasized the importance of quantifying the health risks associated with fossil fuel combustion to persuade policymakers and stakeholders to consider alternative energy sources.