But it doesn't seem quite real until you see the people behind those statistics. Photographer Souvid Datta provides a glimpse of their lives in China: The Human Price of Pollution, revealing the people living in smog-choked cities and drawing water from grimy, polluted rivers.

Datta, who's only 24, started the project partly for personal reasons. When he was 17, a Chinese friend died of lung cancer, a disease doctors said was exacerbated by the poor air quality in Beijing. The death hit Datta hard and sent him on a journey to help people understand the human cost of filthy air and water.

"Pollution is often an abstract or statistical issue, remote and unsexy for news readers and editors," he says. "The work had to evoke a sense of genuine empathy and curiosity in readers, something that could nudge them towards productive awareness."