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Data

Air pollution deaths from fossil fuels

About this data

Source
Lelieveld et al. (2019) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
November 17, 2020
Date range
2015–2015
Unit
deaths

Related research and writing

Data review: how many people die from air pollution?

Max Roser

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Lelieveld et al. – Effects of fossil fuel and total anthropogenic emission removal on public health and climate

Lelieveld et al. (2019) quantify excess mortality and years of life lost (YLL) from air pollution.

They do this by applying an atmospheric chemistry–general circulation model to calculate the impacts of air pollution on climate and public health. This model includes concentrations of ozone (O3) and particulate matter, including PM2.5. These concentrations are then used to convert to health burden based on the Global Burden of Disease methodology.

– Air pollution deaths from all sources includes pollution from all anthropogenic sources (fossil fuels, agriculture, residential energy use, and non-fossil industrial emissions) and natural emissions from sources such as desert dust. – Air pollution deaths from fossil fuels includes local air pollution generated from the burning of coal, oil and gas. – Air pollution deaths from all anthropogenic sources includes pollution from fossil fuels plus agriculture, residential energy use, and non-fossil industrial emissions.

Our World in Data has also converted these mortality and YLL metrics into rates based on the population figures included in the study's Supplemental material.

Our World in Data has also calculated fossil fuel and total anthropogenic pollution deaths as a share of total air pollution deaths based on the paper's original data.

Retrieved on
November 17, 2020
Retrieved from
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/15/7192
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Lelieveld, J., Klingmüller, K., Pozzer, A., Burnett, R. T., Haines, A., and Ramanathan, V. (2019). Effects of fossil fuel and total anthropogenic emission removal on public health and climate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(15), 7192-7197.

Lelieveld et al. (2019) quantify excess mortality and years of life lost (YLL) from air pollution.

They do this by applying an atmospheric chemistry–general circulation model to calculate the impacts of air pollution on climate and public health. This model includes concentrations of ozone (O3) and particulate matter, including PM2.5. These concentrations are then used to convert to health burden based on the Global Burden of Disease methodology.

– Air pollution deaths from all sources includes pollution from all anthropogenic sources (fossil fuels, agriculture, residential energy use, and non-fossil industrial emissions) and natural emissions from sources such as desert dust. – Air pollution deaths from fossil fuels includes local air pollution generated from the burning of coal, oil and gas. – Air pollution deaths from all anthropogenic sources includes pollution from fossil fuels plus agriculture, residential energy use, and non-fossil industrial emissions.

Our World in Data has also converted these mortality and YLL metrics into rates based on the population figures included in the study's Supplemental material.

Our World in Data has also calculated fossil fuel and total anthropogenic pollution deaths as a share of total air pollution deaths based on the paper's original data.

Retrieved on
November 17, 2020
Retrieved from
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/15/7192
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Lelieveld, J., Klingmüller, K., Pozzer, A., Burnett, R. T., Haines, A., and Ramanathan, V. (2019). Effects of fossil fuel and total anthropogenic emission removal on public health and climate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(15), 7192-7197.

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At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

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  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Air pollution deaths from fossil fuels”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from Lelieveld et al.. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/pollution-deaths-from-fossil-fuels.html [online resource] (archived on May 11, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Lelieveld et al. (2019) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Lelieveld et al. (2019) – processed by Our World in Data. “Air pollution deaths from fossil fuels” [dataset]. Lelieveld et al., “Effects of fossil fuel and total anthropogenic emission removal on public health and climate” [original data]. Retrieved May 13, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/pollution-deaths-from-fossil-fuels.html (archived on May 11, 2026).

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Data API

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Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/pollution-deaths-from-fossil-fuels.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/pollution-deaths-from-fossil-fuels.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/pollution-deaths-from-fossil-fuels.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/pollution-deaths-from-fossil-fuels.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/pollution-deaths-from-fossil-fuels.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/pollution-deaths-from-fossil-fuels.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/pollution-deaths-from-fossil-fuels.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/pollution-deaths-from-fossil-fuels.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear