It is a grisly statistic, and it comes with a cost.
The number of deaths related to air pollution in Australia has increased significantly, when most of the world's major economies have seen their death rates decline.
A new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, called The Cost of Air Pollution: Health Impacts of Road Transport, shows Australia has failed to halt the dangerous rise in air pollution. It estimates the economic cost of that failure has run into the billions.
The report shows that between 2005 and 2010, the number of deaths from air pollution in Australia jumped from 882 to 1483, representing a 68 per cent rise.
The pattern is similar for the number of ''years of life lost'' due to air pollution. It also shows Australia is in a minority of countries that saw this happen.
Of the 34 countries in the OECD, 20 saw their pollution-related deaths decline in that five-year period. Australia was in the minority of 14 countries that saw their death rates increase.
The report says the health impacts of local air pollution, particularly from road transport, were ''much larger than previously thought''.
''[So] governments should maintain strong regulatory regimes, particularly strict vehicle standards,'' the report advises.
''Given the size of the economic cost of the health effect of air pollution, the benefits of reducing that burden could easily outweigh the monetary cost of investments in more ambitious programs to reduce pollution.''
In October last year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the world's leading expert on cancer, classified outdoor air pollution as carcinogenic.
On Thursday, the OECD report said the economic cost of deaths from air pollution for OECD countries hit $US1.7 trillion in 2010.
It said evidence suggested that road transport was probably responsible for about half that total.
It also said the economic cost for Australia was about $5.8 billion in 2010, up from $2.9 billion just five years earlier.
The report says the switch to more polluting diesel vehicles in many countries - in part to combat climate change - was threatening to reverse the downward trend in emissions from road transport.
