The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that the Chinese government, the bank's partner in the research project, had asked the lender not to publish the estimates for fear they could trigger social unrest.

The conference version of the study, available at the bank's Web site, says some estimates of the physical and economic cost of pollution have been omitted because of uncertainties about calculation methods and their application.

However, the report goes on to estimate the health costs from premature deaths associated with outdoor air pollution at 394 billion yuan ($51.8 billion). With each life valued at 1 million yuan, that works out at a death toll of 394,000.

 Source : Reuters Enviroment