While driving to work in my car today, I could feel a marked change in the air. My eyes were stinging and my throat felt scratchy. My exercise for the day had been confined indoors at home, so clearly these could only be the immediate effects of coming into contact with the air on my commute, as I was driving with my windows rolled down.
Last year, a colleague led me to a lot of data that proved exactly how bad Delhi's air is, particularly during the winter. These were statistics, cold hard facts, screaming out doomsday in all their colour-coded glory. He is from Kerala himself, used to a vastly superior quality of air. The alarming levels of particulate matter in Delhi's air got him to stop going for his daily runs in Lodhi Gardens and abruptly cancel any plans he had to participate in Delhi's flagship long distance run, the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon.
Checking the air quality everyday became an obsessive winter pastime. It would be one of the first few things we would do on reaching office - a sad commentary on the things hazardous air drives people to do. I would restrict myself to the U.S. Embassy website, but my friend would go all out to read the more comprehensive data available elsewhere, for example on Pollution Control Board website, which led him to conclude that the air around Lodhi Gardens was terrible. Ironically he has now moved to a workplace closer to the Pollution Control Board headquarters, and closer to Lodhi Gardens, the park he no longer allows himself to run in.
As we ploughed through the data available on the U.S. Embassy website everyday last winter, multiple times, we would despair a little more each time, as the air quality would slip from "very unhealthy" to "hazardous". On good days in winter, Delhi's air hovered in the "unhealthy" category, the ill-effects of which the U.S. Embassy website describes as "Increased aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly; increased respiratory effects in general population."
Last year, a colleague led me to a lot of data that proved exactly how bad Delhi's air is, particularly during the winter. These were statistics, cold hard facts, screaming out doomsday in all their colour-coded glory. He is from Kerala himself, used to a vastly superior quality of air. The alarming levels of particulate matter in Delhi's air got him to stop going for his daily runs in Lodhi Gardens and abruptly cancel any plans he had to participate in Delhi's flagship long distance run, the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon.
Checking the air quality everyday became an obsessive winter pastime. It would be one of the first few things we would do on reaching office - a sad commentary on the things hazardous air drives people to do. I would restrict myself to the U.S. Embassy website, but my friend would go all out to read the more comprehensive data available elsewhere, for example on Pollution Control Board website, which led him to conclude that the air around Lodhi Gardens was terrible. Ironically he has now moved to a workplace closer to the Pollution Control Board headquarters, and closer to Lodhi Gardens, the park he no longer allows himself to run in.
As we ploughed through the data available on the U.S. Embassy website everyday last winter, multiple times, we would despair a little more each time, as the air quality would slip from "very unhealthy" to "hazardous". On good days in winter, Delhi's air hovered in the "unhealthy" category, the ill-effects of which the U.S. Embassy website describes as "Increased aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly; increased respiratory effects in general population."
Today's air is, as I suspected, dangerous to be out in. While the U.S. Embassy website is not functioning at the time of writing this post, another website points out that the air near Lodhi Road has particulate matter to the tune of 213. Last year, the quality of air deteriorated steadily after Diwali. Today, it is one day before Dusshehra, and 21 days before Diwali, and the air is already showing signs of being worse than last year. And the winter has barely even begun.
There is a growing dissatisfaction with the half-measures being taken by the state to tackle the problem of pollution. With dubious jurisdiction to do so, the National Green Tribunal has already imposed a ban on vehicles older than 15 years, and imposed a high charge on heavy vehicles passing through Delhi. The ban on vehicles older than 15 years may not be a solution, Professor Dinesh Mohan writes, since the primary contributor to air pollution lies elsewhere in industrial centres and brick kilns. The charge on heavy vehicles passing through Delhi may also be illusory, since it effectively replaces a complete ban of non-Delhi-bound vehicles passing through Delhi. And we should know better than to laud symbolic gestures such as re-routing (not banning) cars for a limited period of time in a small segment of Delhi on Dusshehra, not acknowledging the lamentable fate of pedestrians and cyclists on all the other days of the year.
Suggestions welcome on where to buy a good pollution mask.
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