[A fraction of the width of a human hair, these particles can be released from vehicles, particularly those with diesel engines, and by industry, as well as from natural sources like dust. They enter the bloodstream through the lungs, worsening cardiac disease and increasing the risk of stroke and heart failure, in addition to causing severe respiratory problems, like asthma and pneumonia.]
By
Geeta Anand
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Smog blanketed New Delhi
in 2016. About 1.1 million people die prematurely
in India every year from
the effects of air pollution. Credit Roberto Schmidt/
Agence France-Presse —
Getty Images
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NEW
DELHI — India’s rapidly
worsening air pollution is causing about 1.1 million people to die prematurely
each year and is now surpassing China’s as the deadliest in the world, a new
study of global air pollution shows.
The number of premature deaths in China
caused by dangerous air particles, known as PM2.5, has stabilized globally in
recent years but has risen sharply in India, according to the report, issued
jointly on Tuesday by the Health Effects Institute, a Boston research institute
focused on the health impacts of air pollution, and the Institute of Health
Metrics and Evaluation, a population health research center in Seattle.
India has registered an alarming increase of
nearly 50 percent in premature deaths from particulate matter between 1990 and
2015, the report says.
“You can almost think of this as the perfect
storm for India,” said Michael Brauer, a professor of environment and health
relationships at the University of British Columbia and an author of the study,
in a telephone interview. He cited the confluence of rapid industrialization,
population growth and an aging populace in India that is more susceptible to
air pollution.
Pollution levels are worsening in India as it
tries to industrialize, but “the idea that policy making should be led by
government is lacking,” Bhargav Krishna, manager for environmental health at
the Public Health Foundation of India, a health policy research center in New
Delhi, said in an interview.
As air pollution worsened in parts of the
world, including South Asia, it improved in the United States and Europe, the
report said, crediting policies to curb emissions, among other things. The
report’s website that provides country-by-country data on pollution levels and
the health and mortality effects.
Environmental regulations in the United
States and actions by the European Commission have led to substantial progress
in reducing fine particulate pollution since 1990, the report said. The United
States has experienced a reduction of about 27 percent in the average annual
exposure to fine particulate matter, with smaller declines in Europe. Yet, some
88,000 Americans and 258,000 Europeans still face increased risks of premature
death because of particulate levels today, the report said.
A fraction of the width of a human hair,
these particles can be released from vehicles, particularly those with diesel
engines, and by industry, as well as from natural sources like dust. They enter
the bloodstream through the lungs, worsening cardiac disease and increasing the
risk of stroke and heart failure, in addition to causing severe respiratory
problems, like asthma and pneumonia.
The report offers good news globally, in some
ways.
Although deaths caused by air pollution grew
to 4.2 million in 2015 from 3.5 million in 1990, the rate of increase of about
20 percent was slower than the rate of the population rise during that time.
That’s because of improved health care in many parts of the world, as well as
public policy initiatives undertaken in the United States, Europe and other
regions that reduced emissions from industrialization, the authors of the study
said in telephone interviews.
China also offers an encouraging sign.
Premature deaths from particulate matter each year have stabilized at around
1.1 million since 2005, the report said. Still, that is an increase of 17
percent since 1990, when it was a little more than 945,000.
The health effects of the ultrafine particles
are still being studied and the full effects are only beginning to be
understood, said Majid Ezzati, a global environmental health professor at the
Imperial College, London.
“These studies are hard to do, and isolating
the effects of air pollution is hard,” Dr. Ezzati said. “The numbers are still
dynamic and nobody should claim an exact number of deaths is known.”
But if he were an Indian citizen, he said,
“I’d say, ‘Let’s not sit there and do nothing about it. Let’s not be exposed to
it today as more research is being done.’”
Although few studies of the health problems
brought by air pollution are based in India, Dr. Ezzati said, “it’s hard to
imagine air pollution that is bad for people in London is not bad for people in
India.”
Neither India’s environment minister nor its
environment secretary could be reached for comment Monday evening.
Robert O’Keefe, vice president at the Health
Effects Institute, said China’s trajectory on deaths from air pollution had
stabilized as a result of the country’s efforts to reduce air pollution.
India, on the other hand, had yet to
undertake sustained public policy initiatives to reduce pollution, said Gopal
Sankaranarayanan, an advocate at the Supreme Court of India who successfully
petitioned it to ban licenses to sell fireworks in the New Delhi metropolitan
area last year. Fireworks during the festival of Diwali contributed to
hazardous levels of air pollution late last year.
Weak environmental regulation in India, he
said, leaves India’s citizens with few alternatives other than to petition the
courts to take action to protect the public’s health.
But the courts often lack the power or
mechanisms to enforce their actions, he said. India’s environmental court, the
National Green Tribunal, ordered farmers to stop burning their crops in the
region around New Delhi in 2015, but the practice still continued last year.
Smoke from the farm fires contributed about one quarter of the levels of the
most dangerous air pollution in the Indian capital, environmental experts said.
“If you can’t enforce the directives of the
courts — it becomes a problem,” Mr. Sankaranarayanan said. “We need practical
solutions to save lives here in India.”
