Emissions improve, but air can still kill

Better emissions introduced in 2000 has possibly saved around seven lakh lives in India between 2000 and 2010 but many lives are still at risk because of rising air pollution in Indian cities. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 27, 2013, 24:43:19 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Better emissions introduced in 2000 has possibly saved around seven lakh lives in India between 2000 and 2010 but many lives are still at risk because of rising air pollution in Indian cities.

The latest Lancet report on disease burden has attributed particulate matter pollution as the fifth biggest cause of deaths in south Asia, including India and the latest Central Pollution Control Board data shows that air pollution is rising in many cities.

Exposure to air pollution can cause breathing problems leading to asthma attacks. According to recent studies, particulate matter upto 2.5 micro grams can even cause a heart attack.

"India has lost ground on management of air pollution even though its vehicles were as efficient as the European ones when emissions norms were introduced in India," Anup Bandivadekar of the International Council on Clean Transportation said at a workshop organised by the Centre for Science and Environment.

India's emission policy expired in 2010 with the introduction of Bharat stage-III emissions norms for the entire country, except 13 cities where Bharat stage-IV norms were made applicable.

What concerns environmentalists like Sunita Narian, CSE's director general, is that the policy delay was impacting the common man's health.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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