Communities Against Pollution – Feb 2026.
Air pollution now kills more people than tobacco.
With decades of empirical evidence, it is globally acknowledged that air pollution causes illness, disease, leads to premature mortality, and in 2023, it accounted for 7.9 million deaths.[1] [2]
In South Africa this silent invisible health crisis continues unnoticed without dramatic public outcry, social media outrage, scandal, or named villain, and our government knowingly allows these air pollution casualties to accumulate in plain sight.
Air pollution related deaths now also surpass the combined mortality numbers of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. [3]
Toxic emissions from different sources such as agriculture, industry, and transportation each have different hazardous effects on human health and the environment. [4] Long term exposures to air borne toxic chemicals, carried on the fine particulate matter PM2.5, bioaccumulate in humans and are associated with serious health issues such as; respiratory diseases, cancers, neurological disorders, and reproductive problems, some of which can lead to premature mortality.
Chemical manufacturers and distributors make statements like “meets regulatory or emission standards”, “BPA-free”, “no added preservatives” or “inconclusive evidence”. They indicate safety without providing sufficient information or evidence. Nevertheless, some of these chemicals that “meet requirements” have been categorically linked to premature births, leukemia, cancers, heart disease, and Parkinson’s disease.
Many of us have spent our lives living in a delusion that chemicals are thoroughly tested before they are released into the market, that regulatory exposure limits genuinely protect public health, and that if harm were caused, someone would intervene. [5]
We are misled to believe that these illnesses and deaths are caused by genetic defects or personal misfortune. These illnesses are not random biological accidents. They are slow-motion catastrophes, driven by corporate greed and tolerated by captured corrupt regulatory systems which are supposed to be designed to protect us.
Some the environmentally linked diseases we face today can be traced back to the deliberate decisions made by companies and industries to use harmful toxic chemicals, long before their safety was proven.
History repeats itself with numbing predictability: an early warning emerges, the industry ignores or conceals it, and regulators, who are underfunded, outmatched, or politically constrained, wait years or decades before they act, resulting in postmortems rather than preventative and or protective measures. Failures in the timely recognition of harm caused and the delays in the enforcement of regulatory policies meant that products like asbestos, benzene, leaded petrol, ozone-destroying Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and many more, caused unacceptable harm to public health.
To understand the cost of regulatory delays, we need only look at the lives of those around us; countless numbers of people struggle with illnesses which have manifested as kidney or autoimmune disease, early-onset cancers, obstructive chronic pulmonary disease, or other conditions rooted in long-term exposure to contaminated environments. Young mothers struggle with infertility or coping with increasing numbers of their children suffering from ADHD, asthma, or autism. Then there are the families grieving fatal heart attacks. All these conditions and illnesses are rooted in exposures to air borne toxic chemicals. [6]
Millions of lives have been lost because of these regulatory delays. Instead of viewing these failures as historical footnotes, we should identify them for what they are, state-sanctioned deaths that are quantifiable outcomes of policies that prioritise short term profits over human life. They create a model of generational harm whereby often a well-informed government permits companies, industries, and coal-fired power stations to continue operations that kill hundreds of thousands of people annually.
These regulatory failures can also be seen in the agricultural industries. Less than 1% of agrochemicals applied to crops reach their target organisms, which means that more than 99% [7] of these highly toxic chemicals contaminate agricultural products, causing damage to public health, beneficial organisms, and ecosystems through adsorption, leaching, volatilisation, drift, and runoff. Exposure to toxic agrochemicals bioaccumulate in humans, building up in body fat, blood, and tissues faster than they can be eliminated. These accumulations are often found in long-term, low-dose exposure through air, food, water, or consumption of contaminated agricultural products, leading to chronic health issues.
Traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) also affects people living or working in locations near busy roadways, where detectable increases of PM2.5 have been measured up to 500 m from the roads. [8]
Some may find some of the questions raised in this article as being provocative or unsettling, but they go to the very core of our legislative, legal, and regulatory systems, built to advance and protect the short-term economy and not people or the environment, and contribute to some of the public health crises we find in our country today.
As a society, we hold people accountable for a single negligent act. Why, then, is there inaction by government and regulatory bodies against industries and businesses for decades of reckless and negligent acts?
When companies and industries emit or sell chemicals, they know are harmful and conceal evidence of their toxicity, what do we call the resulting deaths? Coincidences? Tragedies? Externalities?
Accountability and liability should not be optional when companies market products that cause disease or death, suppress evidence, mislead regulators and or the consumers, and profit while the public pays the price with its health.
It is unreasonable and unjustifiable to expect the public to rely on regulatory and legal systems that are slow to respond, after the illnesses are diagnosed, the damage done, and the body count mounts. Is it not time we changed the burden of proof from innocent until proven guilty to guilty until proven innocent in all cases involving toxic chemicals and emissions?
When our government delays regulation, sometimes for decades, what do we call this failure of the regulatory system and resulting deaths? Complacency? Complicity? Corruption?
The regulatory and legal systems require us to prove that a chemical caused a particular disease at a specified dosage in the victim. [9] It demands extraordinary proof before acting or convicting. Details that are near impossible to prove without free access to all the information, exacerbated by the fact that there is no publicly accessible database of chemicals and pesticides registered for use in South Africa. [10] Thus, the same harm continues to unfold insidiously, across populations, and during early foetal and child development windows.
Why must we continue to tolerate widespread involuntary exposure?
Why should these deaths be quietly absorbed by families, communities, and entire generations?
Are these deaths just collateral damage so that the gears of the economy can keep turning?
Every death caused by regulatory delay is a preventable one. Is it not time to classify these deaths as culpable homicide or even murder and hold chemical company CEOs, regulators, and politicians accountable?
Stand behind our call for immediate government action:
Change in Legislation: That requires all chemical manufacturers and distributors to prove their products are not toxic to humans and or the environment before they become commercially available, rather than requiring the state or the victims prove they were affected after the fact.
Transparent Decision-Making: No more self-regulation by the chemical industry. The immediate establishment of a publicly accessible database of chemicals registered for use in South Africa.
Immediate Ban of Highly Hazardous Pesticides: A South African ban on importation, distribution, and or use of all toxic pesticides that are banned in the EU and other jurisdictions due to their health and environmental risks.
- Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation – P Pant PhD – Oct 2025
- State of Global Air Report 2025 – Health Effects Institute – Oct 2025
- Circular Economy and Pollution Management – World Bank Group – Oct 2025
- Mortality and Long-Term Exposure to Source-Specific PM2.5 – Prof X Meng PhD et al – The Lancet Planetary Health – Jan 2026
- A Sign in the Window Bruce Lanphear MD, MPH – Jan 2026
- The Long Poisoning – Bruce Lanphear MD, MPH – Dec 2025
- Amounts of pesticides reaching target pests. – D Pimentel PhD – Cornell University – 1995
- Long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution and selected health outcomes H Boogaard PhD et al – ScienceDirect Jun 2022
- The Health of a Democracy – Bruce Lanphear MD, MPH – Jan 2026
- Heads Must Roll for Terbufos Regulatory Failure – groundWork – Nov 2024
