Jordan Peterson on health: what the evidence says · JRE #1769

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

A 2018 WHO report/news release, "More than 90% of the world's children breathe toxic air every day" (accompanying "Air pollution and child health: Prescribing clean air"), found that roughly 93% of the world's children under 15 (about 1.8 billion) breathe outdoor air exceeding WHO pollution guidelines, and attributed about 600,000 under-15 deaths in 2016 to the combined effects of ambient and household air pollution. Peterson's 93 percent/1.8-billion figure and the 600,000 death toll both accurately reflect that same 2018 WHO release. Notably, that identical release also states the broader air-pollution problem "shortens the lives of around 7 million people each year" -- meaning the two figures Peterson cites back to back (600,000 and 7 million) both appear on the same source document he was evidently reading from live, rather than being two updates from years apart as his on-air correction implies. However, the two numbers measure different things: 600,000 is under-15 deaths specifically, while 7 million is an all-ages, all-cause premature-death estimate from ambient and household air pollution combined -- not a child-specific figure and not strictly a life-expectancy measure, though WHO's more recent (2019/2021) fact sheets put this same combined all-ages estimate at 6.7 million (4.2 million from ambient pollution in 2019 plus 2.9 million from household pollution in 2021, the latter including over 309,000 deaths of children under 5). So while both of Peterson's numbers are genuine WHO statistics drawn from real (if slightly dated) sources, his framing that 600,000 was an old figure superseded by 7 million is inaccurate; the two describe different populations rather than the same statistic updated over time.