Pollution was responsible for 22 lakh deaths in India in 2019, according to a recent study. The death toll because of air pollution stood at 16.7 lakh, the most in any country
The amount of pollution in India remains well above the WHO guidelines in 93 per cent of the country. AP
Pollution killed 22 lakh people in India in a year. Air pollution was responsible for 16.7 lakh deaths in the country in 2019, according to a recent report on pollution and health published in The Lancet Planetary Health, the largest in any country.
Ninety lakh people died across the world because of all types of pollution with the toll attributed to dirty air from cars, trucks, and industry rising 55 per cent since 2000. China remains the most polluted country with 24 lakhs death, India is a close second.
Pollution kills about the same number of people a year around the world as cigarette smoking and second-hand smoke combined, according to the study.
“9 million deaths is a lot of deaths,” said Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Public Health Program and Global Pollution Observatory at Boston College.
India’s pollution problems
The report says that the amount of pollution in India remains well above the World Health Organisation guidelines in 93 per cent of the country.
Of the 16.7 lakh air pollution-related deaths in the country, 9.8 lakh were caused by PM2.5 pollution, and another 6.1 lakh by household air pollution. The number of deaths from indoor air pollution and water pollution has decreased. However, these reductions are offset by increased deaths attributable to industrial pollution such as ambient air pollution and chemical pollution, the report pointed out.
Air pollution is responsible for 17.8 per cent of all deaths in the country.
The polluted spaces
Air pollution is the most severe in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, which contains Delhi and some of the world’s most polluted cities.
In New Delhi, air pollution peaks in the winter months and last year the city saw just two days when the air wasn’t considered polluted. It was the first time in four years that the city experienced a clean air day during the winter months, says The Associated Press, quoting the Lancet report.
Burning of biomass in households was the single-largest cause of air pollution deaths in India, followed by coal combustion and crop burning, according to the report.
Government efforts
The number of deaths remained high despite efforts by the government to control household air pollution including the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, an initiative launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2016 to distribute LPG connections to below-poverty-line households.
India has developed a National Clean Air Programme and in 2019 launched a Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region. However, India does not have a strong centralised administrative system to drive its air pollution control efforts and consequently improvements in overall air quality have been limited and uneven, the report has said, according to The Indian Express.
It’s a South Asia problem
That air pollution remains the leading cause of death in South Asia reconfirms what is already known, but the increase in these deaths means that toxic emissions from vehicles and energy generation is increasing, Anumita Roychowdhury, a director at the advocacy group Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, told AP.
“This data is a reminder of what is going wrong but also that it is an opportunity to fix it,” Roychowdhury said.
Pollution deaths are soaring in the poorest areas, experts said.
Pollution and economic losses
Economic losses due to modern forms of pollution have increased have proportion of GDP between 2000 and 2019 in India, China, and Nigeria, and are now conservatively estimated to amount to approximately 1% of the GDP in each of these countries. The full economic losses, if the full health impacts of pollution were to be counted and the effects of pollution on informal sectors and environmental damage were to be fully detailed are likely to be greater, the study said.
With inputs from agencies
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