Over the past 10 years, India has gained worldwide notoriety for having the maximum number of cities with the world's worst air quality. The entire population that reveres every aspect of nature has contributed to its deterioration through negligence, ignorance, and malfeasance. Our media outlets only care about this news when some International Organization comes up with a new ranking, marking us as the most polluted. In response, our general conscience is tickled for a fleeting moment. With this article, I aim to tackle the ignorance of our general populace on this topic.
At first, let's draw our attention to the magnitude of this problem. According to a 2019 study [1], the death of 12 lakh Indians per year has been attributed to air pollution. This dwarfs even some of the grim predictions given for Coronavirus in India for which we have had a 40-day countrywide lockdown. The pollution-related deaths include deaths due to pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer [2], all conditions that are incepted or exacerbated because of polluted air. Someone else's death for Indians is merely a number in our daily newspaper. Hence, it may be more useful to talk about the effect on the health of each individual. The hazardous air quality of India is associated with a decrease in 1.5 years of your life [1]. Now, let's consider the economic cost of ignoring this problem, which is crippling our country's growth. India is set to lose almost ~5.4% of GDP or about 10 lakh crore due to the adverse effect of pollution on our health [3]. This is greater than 4 times our allocation to the entire health sector (stands at ~1.3% of GDP). The cost comes from the loss of productive life of individuals, the cost of an overburdening health system, and the loss of about 50 crore working days among India's working population due to pollution-related illnesses [4].
The picture is grim, especially for India. In my opinion, the first step is a greater public awareness and this article serves to alleviate that problem. Indians must know more about the sources of air pollution, government policies for clean air, and about individual actions that must be taken to rein in this menace.
KNOWING THE ENEMY
We have heard about pollution from industries, automobiles, and construction. Often, the context is government regulations on curbing it. Yet we little about how exactly are they polluting the air. There are many pollutants, but for India's common man, we will focus on Ozone, and Particulate Matter (PM).
Ground-level ozone is a pollutant that is not directly emitted by pollution sources. It is released in the atmosphere when pollutants (SO2, NOx, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)) from industries and automobiles react in the presence of sunlight. Along with Ozone, these reactions release fine particles that remain suspended in the air, the combined effect of which, in low or no-wind condition results in the infamous smog [5] of Northern India. Funnily enough, Ozone, a toxic gas, has the same building blocks in a different orientation as the essential, Oxygen; talk about the fine balance of nature.
Why is Ozone toxic? Ozone is a powerful oxidizer [6], which means it can cause the same type of process that produces rust in iron, but much more nefariously. It is extremely harmful to humans causing irritability on the skin and in the air passage. Moreover, it is also known to adversely affect crops, and building structures.
Particulate Matter or PM is often the headlining pollutant of India. By definition, it refers to a range of tiny particles that may or may not be visible to the naked eye in the air. It could be anything from dust particles to unburnt carbon particles and can remain suspended in the air for long durations.
Why should PM concern us? These foreign particles enter our bloodstream through the respiratory tract resulting in a range of health problems.
Roadside construction material [7], indiscriminate outdoor fires [8], and industrial or vehicular emissions are all responsible for the increase in the levels of PM in your surroundings. In India, its effect is more vicious due to:
- extensive use of low-quality cooking fuels, like, firewood, coal, and cow dung cakes [2,9]
- ill-conceived adulteration of cleaner fuels for transportation [10]
- poor oversight of industrial emissions [11]
- systematic failure of government enforcement and individual responsibility for pollution control of independent & public vehicles [12]
Especially the first point is specific to South Asian and African economies. The adverse effect of PM filled smoke emitted from non-LPG cooking sources is compounded by the lack of proper ventilation in rural households [13] and the claustrophobic design of the urban slums [14]. The second point above reinforces our image as an inherently corrupt system, where rules are often circumvented and the latter two points may be attributed to poor governance. Often the discussion around PM is done using some numbers like, PM2.5 and PM10, which simply refers to particles with diameters, D < 2.5µm, and diameters between 2.5µm < D < 10µm, respectively. The count of both metrics is much higher for Indian cities than most European or American cities.
VISUALIZING POLLUTION
Now that we know a bit about what concerns us, let's look at the level of these dangers in which we live. The following videos show how PM2.5, PM10, and Ozone level variations were captured by the air quality monitoring stations set up by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), India. The color-coding used in the map refers to the table below and is consistent with the standards set up by CPCB (Source). Green is GOOD, red is BAD. The grayed out area represents the regions where no data was available.
Github repository for the related source code is shared here. Disclaimer: As the project evolved, some file names may have been changed. Their references in other files will have to be updated in case you run into an error.
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Daily PM2.5 Variation in 2019
Daily PM10 Variation in 2019
Daily Ozone Variation in 2019
| Pollution Levels | PM 2.5 (in µg/m3) | PM 10 (in µg/m3) | Ozone (in µg/m3) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 (Dark Green) | 0 - 30 | 0 - 50 | 0 - 50 |
| Level 2 (Light Green) | 31 - 60 | 51 - 100 | 51 - 100 |
| Level 3 (Yellow) | 61 - 90 | 101 - 250 | 101 - 168 |
| Level 4 (Orange) | 91 - 120 | 251 - 350 | 169 - 208 |
| Level 5 (Red) | 121 - 250 | 351 - 430 | 209 - 748 |
| Level 6 (Maroon) | 250+ | 430+ | 748+ |
A Short Critique
This article is not geared towards describing the extent of pollution. However, I would be remiss if I do not mention the salient features of these images. The above videos clearly show the extremely hazardous levels of PM2.5 and PM10 that exist over a lot of north and central India especially during the Winter. The respite during summer is not due to human intervention but due to the natural summer monsoons that India receives. We haven't done our bit to curb pollution. For now, Ozone levels are under control but due to its hazardous nature, careful monitoring of its levels is necessary.
The most obvious takeaway from these videos is the large swaths of south, northeast, and parts of northern & central India that are grayed out. No air quality monitoring stations exist in these locations, which highlights the short-sightedness of our Clean Air Program, and only focusing on UP, Rajasthan. Only 128 cities are monitored in the country (of nearly 4000 cities). Districts that lie within 200km of these cities have been prescribed the same pollution levels and shown in the videos above. Even then a significant area is grayed out. It shows the lack of data acquisition even in the face of a crisis. This is clearly not a rigorous exercise, hence, I have taken the liberty of a 200km radius. It is simply an individual's effort to understand our country's air!
FIGHTING THE ENEMY
The Government has prioritized air pollution as an agenda with the National Clean Air Program, Prime Minister Ujwala Yojana (PMUY), and expediting the rollout of BS-VI vehicular emission norms. Even an entire book may not be sufficient to discuss and debate about Government undertakings, flaws in their implementation, and its lackluster final product. But, this does not vindicate us of responsibility.
An individual must:
1. Restrain from burning garbage or dried leaves. Instead, collect it and throw it along with household garbage in designated locations identified during Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan. Your locality is your house as well.
2. Reduce the use of private vehicles, and instead walk, carpool, taxi, or use public transport.
3. Engage with your neighbors during any construction. Complain if anyone uses roadside for construction debris/material and don't take responsibility for it. [15]
4. Actively engage with initiatives like PMUY by communicating the benefits to poorer households and assisting them in taking its full benefit [16]
5. Spread awareness. Make air pollution an important agenda on which you cast your vote in elections. Remember, that this is an improvement in daily life we will be fighting for.
Let's not wait for a savior!
SIDE NOTE ABOUT THE VISUALIZATIONS
Creating the above visualizations was a separate personal project that I had to undertake to give substance to this post. Another contributor to this project was my fiancee, Nidhi Tyagi, who is currently a resident of Delhi, notoriously known for its toxic air quality.
This visualization required developing several Python scripts (that was a new language for me), extracting data from the CPCB website for individual stations (Source), entity-matching for city names used to identify districts and the stations, and extensive exploitation of Microsoft Excel's capability to manipulate a large data-set. Details about this project are now shared in a Github repository for anyone interested (Source Code). Disclaimer: As the project evolved, some file names may have been changed. Their references in other files will have to be updated in case you run into an error.
Not many people would invest the time, and not many events like the lockdown will happen often to give the time-bandwidth to even concerned individuals. My sincere request to the CPCB and other Government bodies is that this data must be more organized and easily accessible.
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