Cutting Through The Haze: Why Delhi’s Notorious Pollution Needs 24x7 Attention
Children are going to school with pollutants at 50-60x the World Health Organisation’s safe limits. The region’s most powerful officials are tasked with cutting air pollution. Yet, little changes.
What is it like living in one of the world’s most, chronically polluted place? Here in Delhi, parents in kids’ football WhatsApp groups are messaging against classes being held with the air pollution at hazardous levels where, government advisories say, ‘everyone should avoid any outdoor physical activity.’ My elder kid has been surprisingly understanding when I asked her to stop attending 6 am training sessions because of high air pollution. At work places, people falling sick with sore throats and worse is common. It’s not expected to get better anytime soon.
Delhi has been forecast to hit ‘severe’ levels over the next few days, which is an official categorisation when the deadly PM 2.5 pollutant crosses 250 micrograms per cubic metre. While that’s horrendously high, fifty times the WHO’s annual safe limit, the actual readings in some areas have been 300-400 and more.
Football camp for school students at Noida, 2019, in dense smog.
At this level all sorts of curbs pre-decided by the government against some sources of pollution kick in, like a ban on construction, on certain industries in Delhi’s neighbourhood and most trucks into the Capital. However, glaring gaps remain. Firstly, there’s no provision in these rules to stop farmers in Punjab, Haryana and other states from burning the stubble of their last harvest. On the 29th of October this smoke constituted 21% of Delhi’s air pollution, up from about 2.5% just a few days earlier.
Secondly, vehicular emissions contribute 30-40%, possibly more to Delhi’s pollution but there are no curbs on the 18 million or so private vehicles in the Capital and its next-door neighbours apart from the limited ban on trucks.
Thirdly, even though the air is thick with toxic pollutants, there is no emergency protection offered to school children. They still have to travel early in the morning which tends to be the most polluted time of day. In fact, for any government-mandated action to cut the health risk to children the level of pollution has to first worsen further, to ‘severe plus,’ as per the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP.)
To understand the health risks, it’s worth taking a look at the big picture, while in the middle of this dirty looking, ghastly smelling, foul tasting haze. What is exactly is this PM 2.5, what is it that we are breathing?
No parent has ever said, ‘it’s ok if my kid breathes arsenic or lead or nitrates.’ Yet these are among the many ingredients that make up PM 2.5, with the exact composition depending on local factors. The fact that these aerosols are microscopic, a fraction of the width of a human hair, means these can defeat the body’s defence mechanisms and settle deep into the lungs from where these can spread - poison - other organs and systems. Children are more vulnerable because their lungs are still developing. Others at risk include the elderly and those with heart and chronic respiratory diseases.
Breathing PM 2.5 includes this:
The recent, seventh Lancet Countdown report explains the health risks as plainly as possible. Air pollution from fossil fuel combustion harms every major organ system. It increases the risk of heart and lung disease, lung cancer, diabetes, neurological disorders and adverse pregnancy outcomes like premature deliveries and low birth weight. In the US it’s a major cause of illness and death. In the state of Utah there is a bill proposed for air pollution to be listed as a cause of death.
In the UK, it’s already been ruled as a cause of death in the landmark case of a nine-year-old girl whose asthma was aggravated by London’s air pollution.
India has the highest air pollution-linked death rate in the G20, whose presidency it assumes for the coming year. About 1.7 million or 17 lakh people are estimated to die annually due to strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and chronic respiratory diseases as a result of outdoor air pollution.
The Indian government when questioned in Parliament, however, has maintained right through years of the crisis that there is “no conclusive data” available to establish a “direct correlation of death/disease exclusively due to air pollution.” It insists air pollution is one of the many factors affecting respiratory ailments and associated diseases, the others being food habits, occupational hazards, immunity, heredity etc. of the individuals apart from the environment alone.
The big question remains what are officials doing, especially elected ones? There are a lot of good plans, some visible steps and some missteps like the pointless smog towers, actions like switching to cleaner fuel types and so on.
There’s also no shortage of empowerment and personnel to implement and enforce pollution control rules. The latest set of orders to lower air pollution issued on 29th October, 2022, has been sent to almost 150 top officials from places as far apart as Panchkula to Jaipur to Lucknow, from Chief Secretaries who head the entire administration of a state to DGPs who head a state’s police. These offices have tens of thousands of personnel. Admittedly there’s much else competing for their attention apart from pollution, but the heavy costs of pollution both financial (estimated at $95 billion annually) and health (losing about 10 years of life expectancy in places like Delhi and Lucknow) need to be counted.
Where should the buck stop? October 29th’s nine-page order with the latest air pollution curbs and sent to about 150 officials, including some very powerful ones, in Delhi and nearby states.
In fact this winter, even powerful politicians have chimed in more vociferously than usual because municipal elections are expected soon in the Capital. Delhi’s chief minister has called pollution the number one poll issue. This can only be good in terms of headlines, awareness, greater scrutiny and political accountability. But as cynics will, rightly, point out things haven’t improved much in the past few years. Despite all the interventions and promises, the only time the air quality category is ‘good’ in Delhi is after a good rain or wind. In recent years, you can count these days on one hand.