We regard this as something of a victory actually

People are throwing around the latest global mortality statistics to show that we've got some grand problem that we've got to deal with. And we're certainly amenable to the argument that things could be better. However, we would also still insist that this is a victory, not a defeat:

Now new research has found that air pollution is the leading environmental risk factor for disease, and the fourth highest risk factor for death. The data is the newest addition to the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study, the most comprehensive international effort to measure epidemiological trends worldwide.

Yes, a victory:

According to the Global Burden of Disease Study, air pollution causes more deaths than malnutrition, obesity, alcohol and drug abuse, and unsafe sex. Cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, as wells as respiratory infections, account for the majority of deaths from air pollution.

Historically human beings have died either from infectious disease or malnutrition. They're the two that have carved great swathes through the population repeatedly. Both are, while not entirely solved, at least under control to a great extent.

Which leads to two further things: the first being that if we don't die of one of those two then we're obviously going to die of something else. And given that life expectancies do keep on growing we are indeed living long enough to die of those other things. But much more specifically to this point, the pollution that is being complained about here is that air pollution. That air pollution which is the result of having a modern economy that is able to be clean enough not to be rife with infectious disease and which also produces enough food that we don't all starve. The poor world has a slightly different problem, in that it's indoor air pollution killing them, from wood cooking fires mostly, something we stopped doing many generations ago.

So, yes, we do regard this as a victory, even if not a complete one. Sure, we could and we will make things rather better as technology improves but that we are all living long enough to die of the side effects of the system that allows us all not to starve to death earlier is indeed a victory.