The World Health Organization (WHO) recently published a report with new numbers of dead people because of air pollution each year: 7 million worldwide – most of them because of stroke and heart and lung diseases.

This is more than twice as high as previously estimated and thus air pollution is the biggest environmental health risk now. And even in Europe 600,000 deaths are linked to pollution according to the WHO study and the German SPIEGEL reports that particulate matter pollution in some German cities like Berlin or Leipzig is significant.

Of course pollution is not a direct risk to data centers or IT equipment like an earthquake or flood, but it has a significant influence when it comes to sustain one of the most important resources for IT: Skilled people. Pollution already influences decisions about whether to outsource IT to certain countries especially in South-east Asia. It becomes harder to find employees from Western countries that are willing to build up a subsidiary or manage partners in these countries if there is significant pollution in this area.

And pollution might even be a risk to IT operations in case administrators are not able to leave their homes due to high Pollution if critical maintenance has to be done on-site. So pollution definitely becomes a topic for information security considerations and a gas mask might be standard equipment in your future emergency kit.