Hello everyone! Today’s blog post, I will be sharing the more insights and perspective on air pollution in India and its geographies.
Air pollution in India
India being one of the most rapidly developing economies in the world, have seen air quality worsening in recent years. This is especially apparent in areas such as India’s capital, Delhi where many areas of air quality deteriorated into the hazardous category. Air pollution contributes substantially to premature mortality and disease burden globally. The main causes of air pollution in India is vehicular pollution, industrial emissions, thermal plants, waste burning and poor households use of cheap and dirty fuels for cooking.
With worsening air quality, this results in wide variety of socio-economic implications where multiple flights were cancelled due to poor visibility, schools ordered to close and worsening health for the people (India Air pollution, 2019)
A study suggests that outdoor air pollution in the country is contributing to more than half a million premature deaths each year at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. A wide variety of studies have found that both outdoor and indoor air pollution can cause a variety diseases such as heart disease, risk of stroke and lung cancer. (Harvey, 2019).
The physical and geographical landscape of Northern India’s region is characterised by natural presence of high mountain ranges, notably, the Himalayas. The Himalayas form a barrier to the north, preventing poor air escaping the region (Bernard & Kazmin, 2018).
The cold air from the Himalayas prevents the warmer air dispersing north into Tibet, thereby further concentrating the air pollution in northern India which continues slowly east towards neighbouring country Bangladesh. This process is further aggravated by other main causes such as the burning of crops during October and November coupled with slow winds from the northwest push the polluted air into the Northern India region (Bernard & Kazmin, 2018). The environmental conditions of India and its geographical space resulted in all the top 10 most polluted cities in the world to all be located in Northern India, passing the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) safe’s limit. At least 140m people in India are breathing air 10 times or more over the WHO safe limit (Bernard & Kazmin, 2018).
Particulate matter with diameter 2.5 mm or less has been causatively linked with most premature deaths (Khilnani & Tiwari, 2018). Acute respiratory tract infections, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, exacerbations of preexisting obstructive airway disease and lung cancer are proven adverse respiratory effects of air pollution (Khilnani & Tiwari, 2018). The report by the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) found pollution to be the largest environmental cause of premature death on the planet, causing 15% of all deaths – some 8.3 million people (India suffers most pollution, 2019). Both India and China led in the number of pollution deaths, with about 2.3 million and 1.8 million respectively (India suffers most pollution, 2019).
In conclusion, we can see that air pollution is a major planetary health risk, with India estimated to have some of the worst levels globally India has disproportionately high mortality and disease burden due to air pollution. Without any governmental regulations and mitigation on sources of air pollution, it will remain as India’s most important environmental contributor to morbidity and mortality.
Thank you for reading!
For the upcoming blog post, I will be sharing about air pollution from daily usage of household items.
References:
https://ig.ft.com/india-pollution/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50280390
Khilnani, G. C., & Tiwari, P. (2018). Air pollution in India and related adverse respiratory health effects. Current Opinion in Pulmonary Medicine, 24(2), 108-116. doi:10.1097/mcp.0000000000000463
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/19/india-suffers-most-pollution-linked-deaths-in-world-study-finds