The World Health Organization published tough new air control regulations Thursday in an attempt to cut down on air-borne pollutants which kill an estimated two million people around the world each year.

In a Geneva press conference, the UN group announced it would push for a worldwide reduction of pollutants from 70 to 20 micrograms per cubic meter.

The current amount of pollutants in micrograms per cubic meter is between 60-76 in Tel Aviv and 47-51 in Haifa, some 65 percent above the new limit.

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According to estimates, some 600 people die each year from air pollution-related diseases in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area alone.

A new law imposing tighter air control regulations called the "clean air bill" is currently under legislation in the Knesset.

According to the WHO, drastically reducing air pollution in cities could prevent 120,000 deaths a year from respiratory infections, heart disease and lung cancer.

An estimated 800,000 people die prematurely each year from
outdoor air pollution and a switch to cleaner fossil fuels could cut this toll by 15 percent, the United Nations agency said.

It issued its first global Air Quality Guidelines, based on consultations with more than 80 leading scientists over three years, which set voluntary targets for particulate matter pollution - which can be inhaled into the lungs and cause tissue damage - sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone.

"We know that this will represent a major challenge for some cities around the world because it is not so easy to implement those targets," Maria Neira, WHO's director for public health and the environment, told a news briefing.

"If we reduce the level of pollutants to the standards we
are recommending, the mortality caused by the outdoor pollution will be reduced by 15 percent," the Spanish doctor said.

Indoor pollution - caused by solid fuels burned for heating and cooking - kills another 1.2 million, bringing the total number of premature deaths from air pollution to 2 million.

The worst-polluted cities for which data was available
included Karachi, New Delhi, Kathmandu, Beijing, Lima and Cairo.

They had around 200 micrograms of particulate matter or PM10 per cubic metre - 10 times the new standard, according to Michal Krzyzanowski, a WHO air quality expert who was technical coordinator for the project.

The WHO's projection for fewer deaths is based mainly on
reducing PM10, caused by burning fossil and other fuels, from a reference point of 70 micrograms per cubic metre down to 20.

London, which has made tremendous progress against pollution over the past decades, is roughly in the recommended range of 20 micrograms, according to Krzyzanowski.

"It should be stressed that health concerns are not limited to the most polluted cities. Substantial health effects are seen even in the relatively cleaner cities of Europe or North America where PM levels are three times lower," he said.

In Europe, Netherlands, Belgium and Milan, Italy, suffer the worst air pollution, while in the United States it is the north-eastern corridor as well as Los Angeles, WHO experts said.

Broadly, the pollution comes from combustion of fossil fuels - petrol or solid fuels - from cars, industry and home fires.

Using incinerators instead of uncontrolled burning of garbage in poor residential areas was one simple way to reduce emissions from very high to moderate levels and protect people.

In recent years, Delhi reduced pollution after rickshaws
which had used high-polluting two-stroke engines switched to using cleaner-burning liquefied natural gas, he said.