It's extrapolation based on the effects of that type of pollution and the amount of pollution.

It's not wrong but it's not telling the whole truth either. More rigorous metrics like YPLL would be better. A 20yo that drops dead is different from an elderly person that dies of lung issues a few years before cancer would have got them and more meaningful metrics attempt to capture this. "Deaths" is just a number and it doesn't tell you much. Age adjusted metrics don't make for bolt headlines or effective emotional appeals so it's understandable why nobody uses them.

Yeah, that's what really irks me about people making direct death comparisons over air pollution, especially when the QoL factor is excuse enough. Calculating the decrease in life expectancy of at-risk patients and then somehow suming them up is much more honest than implying the death of an elderly lung cancer patient a month early is a life destroyed by pollution.

This conversation is a lot less abstract if you know someone with COPD or severe asthma. The condition kills them but the pollution pulls the trigger.

We probably should have all the major execs sitting on death row for the deaths "caused" by leaded fuel belching out of cars with no emissions controls at all.

In places where diesel isn't placed on a pedestal to suppress gasoline usage, air quality is far better than it was 40 years ago.

For those that did not know, YPLL=Years of Potential Life Lost. Commonly used when estimating pollution impacts.

The NY Times published an article[1] in 2015 that asked a few public health experts to estimate the loss of life in the US due to the fraud.

An MIT study claims over 1,200 premature deaths in Europe due to the fraud. [2][3]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/upshot/how-many-deaths-di...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/science/volkswagen-emissi...

[3] https://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-dea...

Excess diesel exhaust particles, multiplied by liters of fuel flowing through the cars over the years. (Edit:) The cars were allowed to emit a certain amount of dangerous substances, causing X amounts of deaths per year. Instead they in reality emitted a larger amount, and caused X + Y deaths per year.

So VW traded Y number of deaths for extra marketshare and profit.

Now I'm really curious what is unscientific about my little explanation?