Arrives weeks after similar air quality seen in neighboring Pakistan.
Air quality in India’s Dehli region reached “severe plus” with pollution at 1,500 on the Air Quality Index. Photo by Rajat Gupta/EPA-EFE
India’s capital region of Delhi has virtually shut down as air pollution hit “severe plus” levels, according to Indian government officials in its pollution control authority
Delhi’s Chief Minister Atishi Marlena said that all of northern India was in the middle of a “medical emergency.” Advertisement
On Monday, pollution levels were recorded at 1,500 on the Air Quality Index, which is 15 times higher than what the World Health Organization considers satisfactory as safe to breathe.
Some areas in Delhi’s national capital territory that houses tens of millions of Indian civilians in a country populated by more than 1 billion people, saw 30 times the maximum level.
“The air quality, to say the least, is toxic,” Dr. Salman Khan posted on social media Monday morning from the streets outside of Delhi airport. “To be honest, I’m falling short of words to describe it,” he added. Advertisement
According to experts, it’s likely to grow worse in the days ahead. But right now in Delhi, according to Khan, it’s simply “unsafe for humans and other living beings in the city.”
So far the toxic air has canceled schools, disrupted air flights, construction work and the city has banned non-essential trucks from entering Delhi. And city officials have asked corporate offices to cut in-person staff by 50% to allow work-from-home.
Khan pointed out Delhi’s worsening toxic air arrived on the same day the United Nations’ climate change conference — commonly known as COP29 — was celebrating “Health Day” at its summit in Baku, Azerbaijan anticipated to run until Friday.
Indian states to its north every year typically see hazardous air from October to January via a combination of lowering temps, smoke, dust, low wind speed, emissions and crop burning. On Sunday, satellites detected 1,334 such crop burning events in six of India’s 28 states.
It arrived weeks after Lahore in neighboring Pakistan to India’s north likewise recorded polluted air levels above the 1,000 mark.
More than 90% of the world’s nations have pollution levels that exceed World Health Organization standards with only Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius and New Zealand meeting its targets, a WHO study found in March. Advertisement
Last week, the Indian government banned all activity that involved use of coal, firewood and diesel-powered machinery for non-emergency use.
“This is unacceptable,” Khan said Monday in a recorded video. “People deserve clean air and a healthy planet.”
A January 2022 report said air pollution in cities causes 1.8 million deaths globally each year.
Meanwhile, a separate report earlier this year indicated that nearly 40% of Americans live where the air is polluted enough to harm. It added how the number of U.S. citizens living with levels of air pollution that could jeopardize their health climbed from about 119 million in 2023 to 131 million now.
However, while U.S. air pollution emissions have fallen in more affluent areas, and its fallen less in areas with larger Hispanic or American Indian populations.
An Indian Supreme Court ruling last month guaranteed clean air as a fundamental human right and ordered its states and federal government to act, but with little to no success.
The Indian doctor’s “humble” request to climate negotiators at the UN’s COP29 conference in Azerbaijan, he said Monday in Delhi’s smoggy streets, is to “not play with our lives,” saying that “our health is non-negotiable,” he said. Advertisement
“I demand accountability,” Khan said noting as a young person who wants a clean planet and “a future where fossil fuels don’t exist.”
