Safeguarding children against toxic air pollution

Inevitably, although all citizens suffer the ill-effects of poisonous air cover over urban India, the most vulnerable are children. According to a damning State of India’s Environment Report, released earlier this year by the highly-reputed Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi, air pollution kills more than 100,000 children aged below five every year – Mini P, Cynthia John & Parvathy Menon Since November 1, Delhi — India’s showpiece national capital (pop.19 million) — has been shrouded in a thick blanket of smoke with the air quality plunging to “severe” category levels. The country’s admin capital now has the dubious distinction of being the world’s most polluted city, and India of hosting 14 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities. The situation in India’s 300 cities and towns with more than 100,000 residents, characterised by roads choked with vehicular traffic, air polluting smokestacks, dying water bodies and depleting green cover, is only marginally better. In autumn and winter months, large scale burning of kharif crops stubble in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh — a cheaper alternative to mechanical tilling — generates clouds of smoke heavy with PM10 and PM2.5 particulate matter which are wafted to Delhi and north India’s cities by seasonal winds, creating deadly blankets of smog. Contemporary India is experiencing a national air pollution emergency with the majority of its cities enveloped by toxic air cover forcing over 140 million citizens to ingest air that is 10x more noxious than the WHO prescribed safe limit (10 μg/m3 for PM2.5 and 20 μg/m3 for PM10). “There are no non-smokers in India. Because of pervasive air pollution countrywide, everybody living in India is a smoker,” says Dr. Arvind Kumar, a prominent chest surgeon and founder of the Lung Care Foundation, Delhi. Inevitably, although all citizens suffer the ill-effects of poisonous air cover over urban India, the most vulnerable are children. According to a damning State of India’s Environment Report (SIER), released earlier this year by highly-reputed Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), Delhi, air pollution kills more than 100,000 children aged below five every year. SIER highlights that greenhouse gas emissions have risen more than 20 percent between 2010 and 2014 and that 86 percent of India’s water bodies are polluted. The India chapter of the Global Burden of Disease 2017 Report (GBDR) of US-based Institute for Health Metrics & Evaluation is even more alarming. The report says that 195,546 children in India died in 2017 due to air pollution-related diseases i.e, 535 child deaths per day which translates into a child dying every three minutes because of inhaling toxic air pollutants. GBDR identifies lower respiratory tract infections caused by exposure to air pollutants as the second-major cause of child mortality, after neonatal disorders. The western state of Rajasthan (pop. 68 million) recorded the maximum number of pollution-related child deaths, with a ratio of 126 mortalities per 100,000 children, followed by Uttar Pradesh (pop. 215 million) and Bihar (100 million). India’s environmentally safest states are Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Telangana, Andhra…