Salt, smoking and alcohol: lifestyle killers on the rise

Paris

THE number of people worldwide whose deaths were tied to avoidable health risks like high blood pressure and smoking has shot up by almost 23 per cent since 1990, researchers said on Friday.

According to results published in British journal The Lancet, scientists concluded that a range of 79 health dangers contributed to 30.8 million deaths in 2013, 5.7 million more than in 1990 even when population growth and ageing were taken into account. "To put it in plain English, we are behaving badly," study co-author Ali Mokdad of the University of Washington told AFP. "I mean we know very well that smoking kills and that blood pressure is another killer. Nobody risks not changing the oil in their car, but nobody pays the same attention to their own body."