India's pollution problem is worse than China's

The World Health Organization recently published data on pollution around the world, focusing on airborne particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers (known as PM2.5). These particles come from coal plants and vehicles, and, at high levels, have been linked to serious respiratory problems.

On this score, 13 of the world's 20 most-polluted cities are all in India. And India's cities have much higher PM2.5 levels than China's:

So how much harm is all this pollution causing? A new study in Economic & Political Weekly — a top journal in Mumbai — finds that 660 million people in India now live in areas where PM2.5 levels exceed the country's national air-quality standards. That excess pollution alone, they estimate, reduces life expectancy at birth by 3.2 years, on average.

"The loss of more than two billion life years is a substantial price to pay for air pollution," Rohini Pande, director of Harvard Kennedy School's Evidence for Policy Design and a co-author of the study, said in a statement. "It is in India’s power to change this in cost effective ways that allow hundreds of millions of its citizens to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives."

Using the numbers from the China study, the authors could get a rough sense of how much harm this is doing — that's where they estimate that excess air pollution in these regions is reducing life expectancy by an average of 3.2 years.

Now, this is only an average: actual exposure can vary a lot from region to region and person to person. Policemen who are working in traffic all day get a higher exposure to air pollution. Wealthier families who can afford air purifiers in their homes get less. But the overall numbers are staggering.

The authors also find that air pollution levels in India's cities haven't shown any improvement in the last five years. If anything, things have gotten a bit worse.

truthbetold wrote:Modi and bjp caused this pollution problem in less than eight months. I am just adding the missing comment from resident modi baiter.

Nobel Prize winner Al Gore was in India this week training some 500 people to evangelize about global warming and convince India to get on board with commitment to cap emissions.