Chinanews, Beijing, July 20 - According to a joint report by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the National Environmental Protection Administration, more than 270 million urban Chinese are breathing polluted air nowadays. It is estimated that about 600 thousand of them will die an early death by 2020 due to polluted air.Every year, 20 million Chinese fall victim to respiratory diseases caused by pollution, not including 5.5 million chronic bronchitis patients.Some overseas media say that every year about 750 thousand Chinese are killed by air pollution, and they claim the data are taken from a report by the World Bank. However, the Ministry of Health and the National Environmental Protection Administration have confirmed the data to be false, and demanded that the World Bank delete them from its report."I have not read that report, thus I don't want to comment on it. Air pollution is still a severe problem in China, although it is very difficult to analyze its harm quantitatively," said Zhou Jian, deputy director of the National Environmental Protection Administration.