Indoor air pollution kills 1.3mn Indians

Over a million people in India — among highest in the world — die every year because of indoor air pollution. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 25, 2013, 24:19:18 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Over a million people in India — among highest in the world — die every year because of indoor air pollution.

But the country’s top advisory body the Planning Commission wants more epidemiological studies before it agrees to put in place national indoor air pollution norms.

Indoor air pollution is a bigger killer than outdoor air pollution in India with the recent global burden of diseases report listing the former as second biggest killer after high blood pressure in India.

The numbers clearly back this data. Around 1.3 million people died of indoor air pollution in 2010 whereas death because of outdoor air pollution was around 6.20 lakh.

Unlike many western countries, India does not have any guidelines for indoor air pollution, which mandate emission norms for home appliances such as refrigerators, air-conditioners and bread toasters and a limit beyond which dirty air inside a home can be bad for one’s health.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has prescribed 20 micro grams in cubic meter (ug/m3) of air for particulate matter as a norm for indoor air pollution.

In India, the average indoor air pollution is 375 ug/m3 and the prime contributor for this is burning of solid fuels, says a study done by Indian Council for Medical Research.

High indoor air pollution caught attention of policy-makers recently and environmentalists wanted the central government to prescribe norms on the lines of national ambient air norms.

The Central Pollution Control Board and public health research body, ICMR wanted the plan panel to agree for national indoor air pollution norms during the 12th five year plan.

The Planning Commission rejected the idea.

There is no dearth of Indian studies on adverse impact of indoor air pollution on health, especially that of women.

The Energy and Resources Institute in a recent study reported that 27.5% of under-five infant mortality in India is because of indoor air pollution.

Another study said that about 80 % of women in India are affected by indoor air pollution.

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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