asiancorrespondent.com
Graham Land
December 4, 2015
WHILE much recent international media attention has focused on air pollution in China — and rightly so — cities in India and Pakistan have it even worse.
For 2014, the World Health Organization compiled a list of air pollution measurements in 1,600 cities in 91 countries. It found that among the world’s 20 most polluted cities, 13 are in India, three in Pakistan and one in Bangladesh. This means that the Indian subcontinent is home to 85% of cities with the poorest air quality on Earth. The seven worst are all in India and Pakistan.
In fact, there is not a single Chinese city in the top 20. Of the list’s three cities outside the Indian subcontinent, one is in Iran (Khormabad at number eight, one in Qatar (Doha at number 12) and one in Turkey (Idgir, number 16).
Beijing, the focus of so much pollution panic, is only around a third as polluted as Delhi, which tops the WHO’s table for highest concentrations of PM10 and PM2.5, or particulate matter measuring less than 10 or 2.5 microns. Particles of these sizes can be very harmful, as they cling to the inside of the lungs, causing and contributing to disease.
Why is so much attention focused on China?
One reason air pollution in China gets more media attention is that it also gets more attention from the Chinese government and Chinese people. When air quality reached hazardous levels in both New Delhi and Beijing late last month, only Beijing’s government issued an “orange alert” health warning, advising residents to stay indoors. As a precaution, construction was halted in the city.
Meanwhile, Delhi — the capital territory of India, which includes New Delhi — held a half marathon.
Air quality in Chinese cities’ tends to fluctuate more due to seasonal use of highly polluting heating systems and this may also affect the media’s coverage of its particularly bad days (as well as its rare blue-sky days). When it gets significantly worse, citizens also use a bit of “people power” and post about it on social media.
Delhi, on the other hand, lacks any protocol for warning residents when pollution levels spike. Responsible precautions are therefore left up to the individual, resulting in creative measures like designer breathing masks, which are no doubt only used by the educated and affluent.
Just how bad is Delhi’s pollution?
On November 28th, the day of the 2015 Airtel Delhi Half Marathon, the air quality index in India’s capital territory was around 530, slightly better than Beijing’s 600, but beyond the WHO’s “Hazardous” range of 301 – 500. To add some perspective on AQI, 0 – 50 is considered “Good”, 51 – 100 “Moderate”, 101-200 “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups”, 151 – 200 “Unhealthy” and 201 – 300 “Very Unhealthy”.
In Delhi, the fumes from 8 million cars, small-scale diesel electricity generators and surrounding coal plants have damaged the lung function of half the city’s 4.4 million children so severely that they will never fully recover.
—The Guardian
At the time of writing, according to the readings provided by the United States Embassy in Beijing, the Chinese capital’s Air Quality Index is 55 (“Moderate”). The US Embassy in New Delhi shows the Indian capital’s AQI to be “Hazardous” at 310.
A lack of awareness: There may be cities more polluted than those in India
While it’s the government’s responsibility to mitigate pollution and the industries that produce it, there is far less impetus for it to do so when the people are not aware of the dangers. Clearly, China is ahead of India in this regard, however India is not the worst in terms of information being available.
Cities in West Africa and the Middle East do not even have their air quality measured by the WHO. A five-month study in Lagos, Nigeria, which has a regional population of over 21 million, showed some sites nearly doubled New Delhi’s average PM 2.5 count.
