Anti-pollution skincare, facial masks, and taking work-from-homes because the air quality was horrible — this is the new norm in Delhi and other metros in India. And, now, a new report undertaken by IQAir AirVisual, titled 2019 World Air Quality Report reveals that five Indian cities figure in the list of 10 most polluted cities in the world. Ghaziabad has pipped Beijing, once the most polluted city in the world, to take first place. Something, we shouldn’t really be proud of.
Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Bhanwari, and Greater Noida figure in the top 10 list. Fourteen out of the top 20 cities are from India. China on the other hand had only one city, Hotan, feature in the top 10 list. China has taken major steps to curb pollution in its cities, especially in its capital Beijing. “In Beijing, it’s a priority in China, when they say something, they do it, they put the resources in,” AirVisual’s director of air quality monitoring Yann Boquillod revealed to a leading daily. He added, “In India, it’s just starting. People need to put more pressure on the government.”
A Lancet study published last year, revealed that one in eight Indians were killed by air pollution. In 2017, air pollution claimed the lives of 1.24 million Indians or 12.5 per cent of the total deaths recorded that year.
According to the findings by the study, “India has one of the highest annual average ambient particulate matter PM2·5 exposure levels in the world. In 2017, no state in India had an annual population-weighted ambient particulate matter mean PM2·5 less than the WHO recommended level of 10 μg/m3,45 and 77 per cent of India’s population was exposed to mean PM2·5 more than 40 μg/m3, which is the recommended limit set by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards of India.”
The Narendra Modi-led government had launched in 2018, the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) to tackle the problem of air pollution and reduce particulate matter in the air. A hundred and two Indian cities came under the scheme.
These findings are extremely worrisome and we’re hoping that the Indian government steps up and does its bit.
