What is the issue?
- Festivals, crop stubble burning, industrial & transportation smoke will soon increase the level of particulate matter in air.
- This is increase will be sustained due to reduced wind speed as winter sets in.
What does the statistics say?
- ‘Global Burden of Disease’ study estimates that, in India, ambient air pollution is responsible for 3,283 premature deaths every day.
- India also recorded the largest deaths due to pollution during the past 25 years.
- Half of the top 20 polluted cities in the world are in India.
What are the long term health effects?
- Till now, almost all air pollution-related deaths were thought to be due to lung diseases.
- However, evidence of pollution aggravating other diseases like heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, chronic kidney disease and cancer is coming up.
- Especially deaths related to ‘particulate matter’ may not be because of diseases of lungs, but due to these other conditions.
- Ultrafine particulate matter emitted by road traffic, rapidly enters the bloodstream after being inhaled.
- These particles then interfere with the normal reactivity of blood vessels, and are distributed to many organs including the kidneys.
What is the way ahead?
- Remedial measures have shown reduction in adverse outcomes effects and improved life expectancy in several parts of the world.
- Better urban planning with proper land-use assessment and environment consciousness needs to be done.
- Inter-disciplinary groups to evaluate the full range of impacts of air pollution on human health are needed.
- Tools need to be developed to identify pollutants, find origin of particles, and develop culturally-appropriate solutions.
Source: The Hindu
