After several weeks of persistent toxic conditions, pollution levels in India’s capital, New Delhi, remain hazardous.
The official Air Quality Index (AQI) across the capital on Thursday hovered between 300 and 400, exposing residents to pollution levels which are 20-30 times higher than those considered safe by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The extreme pollution has enveloped the city in a thick, choking smog. It has also blocked sunlight, forcing vehicle drivers to switch on their headlights to avoid accidents during the day, while pedestrians and cyclists cautiously grope their way across the city through the grey haze.
Scores of flights and trains have been delayed or diverted, with visibility dropping to dangerous levels, and emergency services at government and private hospitals have struggled to cope with the rising number of cases involving the elderly and children, who are most susceptible to inhaling poisonous PM2.5 and PM10 particles in the atmosphere.
RM Block
These microscopic pollutants – far thinner than human hair – exist in dangerously concentrated levels in Delhi’s deathly air, penetrating deep into the lungs. They also enter the bloodstream, sharply increasing risks of chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, heart disease, and other potentially fatal conditions.
“My elderly father was admitted into hospital after an entire day of waiting, as he was wheezing heavily,” said Rampal Maurya, a gardener from South Delhi’s Sangam Vihar residential colony on Thursday. Even now, his father is not being attended to in the overcrowded ward, where he is sharing a bed with two other patients, as there are simply not enough doctors in attendance.
Clothes designer Rita Paul (65), said the city had become a “gas chamber” and that for the past three weeks she has been forced to spend the entire time at home surrounded by air purifiers. “I dare not go out, lest I choke,” the 65-year-old stated.
Leading environmentalist Sunita Narain said air pollution was a great equaliser. “We will never clean up Delhi’s air by being nice to everybody, particularly the rich,” she said, adding that tackling pollution necessitated implementing uncomfortable decisions, not half measures.
The authorities have implemented the highest Stage IV measures under the Graded Response Action Plan to tackle pollution, which includes halting construction, restricting industrial activity, and limiting the movement of older vehicles, but to no avail.
They have also mandated that half of all government and private sector employees work from home and all schools operate online, to protect children from the poisonous air and keep buses that transported them off the roads.
Environmentalists, however, have warned that such “feeble” measures are unlikely to help, as stagnant winds, temperature inversion, vehicular emissions, dust and sand from construction work, and crop stubble burning in neighbouring Haryana and Punjab states have jointly created the suffocating haze over Delhi, which is poised to get worse.
They say stricter emission controls, reduced vehicle use, expanded public transport, bans on stubble burning, enforced industrial regulations, promotion of clean energy, and long-term urban planning are urgently needed to safeguard public health and curb Delhi’s lethal pollution.
