Urban terror: Air pollution reduces life span by 3.2 years in India

A new study says that high particulate matter (PM) pollution reduces life expectancy by 3.2 years for 660 million Indians in polluted urban conglomerates, including Delhi, which means a loss of 2.1 billion life years.

Updated on: Feb 22, 2015, 10:27:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A new study says that high particulate matter (PM) pollution reduces life expectancy by 3.2 years for 660 million Indians in polluted urban conglomerates, including Delhi, which means a loss of 2.1 billion life years.

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“The loss of more than two billion life years is a substantial price to pay for air pollution,” says the study done by researchers at Chicago University, Yale University and Harvard University.”This may still be an underestimate of the costs of air pollution, because we do not account for the impact of other air pollutants.”

The impact of particulate matter pollution on people from the lower economic strata is higher as they don’t have capability to deal with the growing hazard. And it is because of their inability, they suffer higher on account of the fall in life expectancy, said Micheal Greenstone of Chicago University, the lead author of the study.

This inference is important considering that air pollution in India is considered a problem created by elite with the governments not willing to take harsh decisions that can impact business.

The study says it makes economic sense to combat air pollution as it “increases productivity due to reduced rate of sickness”. Another author Rohini Pande of Harvard Kennedy School says reforms of thae current form of regulation would allow for health improvements that lead to increased growth.

High exposure to particulate of 2.5 microns that penetrate deep inside the lungs can cause cardiovascular problems apart from enhancing breathing ailments. Extremely high exposure for a long time can also cause lung cancer.

The study also says that 54.5% of Indians are exposed to high levels of fine particulates (PM2.5) as air quality in these regions don’t meet the national air safety standard. The Indian standard of 40 unit grams in cubic meter of air (ug/m3) is four times of the one prescribed by the World Health Organisation (WHO)."Nearly every Indian lives in an area with PM 2.5 pollution above the WHO standard," the study said.

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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