研究：减少碳排放有助健康长寿

Cutting global warming pollution would not only make the planet healthier, it would make people healthier too, new research suggests.

最新研究表明，减少温室气体排放不仅能改善地球环境，还可以改善人们的健康。

Members of Greenpeace unfurl a banner in the Manaus municipal theater during protest on climate change in Manaus November 26, 2009.

Slashing猛烈的，严厉的 carbon dioxide emissions could save millions of lives, mostly by reducing preventable可预防的 deaths from heart and lung diseases, according to studies released Wednesday and published in a special issue of The Lancet British medical journal.

"Relying on fossil fuels leads to unhealthy lifestyles, increasing our chances for getting sick and in some cases takes years from our lives," US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a telecast电视广播 briefing from her home state of Kansas. "As greenhouse gas emissions go down, so do deaths from cardiovascular心血管的 and respiratory diseases呼吸疾病. This is not a small effect."

Instead of looking at the health ills caused by future global warming, as past studies have done, this research looks at the immediate benefits of doing something about the problem, said Linda Birnbaum, director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Some possible benefits seemed highly speculative投机的，推测的, the researchers conceded承认，给予, based on people driving less and walking and cycling more. Other proposals studied were more concrete and achievable, such as eliminating cook stoves炉灶，火炉 that burn dung, charcoal木炭 and other polluting fuels in the developing world.

And cutting carbon dioxide emissions also makes the air cleaner, reducing lung damage for millions of people, doctors said.

"Here are ways you can attack major health problems at the same time as dealing with climate change," said lead author Dr. Paul Wilkinson, an environmental epidemiologist流行病学家 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Wilkinson said the individual studies came up with提出，想出 numbers of premature deaths早逝 prevented or extra years of life added for certain locales.

For example, switching to low-polluting cars in London and Delhi, India, would save 160 lost years of life in London and nearly 1,700 in Delhi for every million residents, one study found. But if people also drove less and walked or biked more, those extra saved years would soar高耸，高涨 to more than 7,300 years in London and 12,500 years in Delhi because of less heart disease.