According to a recent report, over seven percent of all deaths, approximately 33,000 each year, in 10 cities in India annually, can be attributed to air pollution levels below India’s national clean air threshold. Smog-filled Indian cities, including the national capital Delhi, experience the ill effects of the world’s worst air pollution, choking the lungs of residents representing a high danger to well-being still being revealed by researchers.
The study analyzed the effect of PM.2.5 level pollutants in major cities which included Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Shimla, and Varanasi. It discovered that 99.8% of the days, PM2.5 levels exceeded the WHO’s safe limits of 15 micrograms per cubic meter, which are minimal pollutants that can get deep into the lungs and bloodstream.
Delhi experienced the highest percentage of daily and yearly deaths attributable to PM2.5 air pollution, which covers particles 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter. These dangerous particles start mainly from vehicular and industrial emissions. Every year, the national capital records around 12,000 deaths connected to air pollution, adding up to a staggering 11.5 percent of its overall deaths.
Bhargav Krishna, a fellow at the Sustainable Futures Collaborative and the study’s lead author said that the significant effects we are observing even below the Indian air quality limits are shocking signifying that possibly we have set our standards higher than what they should be. The researchers looked at 3.6 million deaths, between 2008 and 2019 in the sample areas and compared them to a comprehensive map of the distribution of PM 2.5, a multiple of pollutants that cause cancer which are so small and can easily enter the bloodstream.
They discovered that exposure as short as 48 hours to elevated degrees of the particles could reduce life expectancy at a collective level, with 7.2% of all fatalities connected to PM 2.5 concentrations over the World Health Organization standard of 15 micrograms per cubic meter. Varanasi logged the second biggest number of deaths during the period, 10.2% or around 830 deaths per year, inferable to short-term PM2.5 exposure higher than the WHO guidelines. During the study period, an estimated 2,100 people died in Bengaluru, 2,900 in Chennai, 4,700 in Kolkata, and 5,100 in Mumbai annually due to high air pollution. Indeed, even in the Himalayan town of Shimla, which had the cleanest air among the Indian cities contaminated, 3.7% of all deaths were pollution-related, the study mentioned.
The study was led by researchers from Ashoka University, Centre for Chronic Disease Control, Sustainable Futures Collaborative, Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, Harvard and Boston Universities, and different spots. There was a steep rise in the risk of deaths at lower concentrations of PM2.5 and tapering off at higher concentrations, with huge impacts seen below the ongoing National Ambient Air Quality Standard of 60 micrograms per cubic meter of air for 24-hour exposure.
