• Worsening air quality is a pan-India problem: 76 percent of Indians live in places that do not meet national air quality standards.
  • Air pollution is a leading risk factor for death: One in eight deaths in India was attributable to air pollution in 2017.
  • The elderly are disproportionately affected: About half of these 1.24 million deaths are of people over the age of 70, making the elderly among the most vulnerable to air pollution, in addition to women, children, and low-income communities.
  • The average life expectancy of a child is reduced by at least 2.6 years. Additionally, 10 percent of all under-five deaths in 2016 were caused by worsening air quality.
  • Low-income populations are overexposed to causes of air pollution because they do not possess the financial strength to defend themselves against it.
  • It is a public health emergency: New research indicates that air pollution impacts birth weight, child growth, obesity, and bladder cancer.
  • Rural India is being sidelined: Of the 600-plus air quality monitoring stations the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) set up across the country, there are none in rural areas.
  • Efforts aren’t reaching the people who need them the most: 49 of the 54 (90 percent) organised citizen mobilisations on air pollution in 2019 occurred in urban areas.
  • Information about it is inaccessible: 84 percent of the total media coverage on air pollution is in English.
  • India has more polluted cities than any other country: 22 of the 30 most polluted cities in the world are in India, and almost 99 percent of Indians breathe air that is above the WHO’s defined safety limits.

Read the full article about air pollution in India by Shloka Nath at India Development Review.