Desi green laws should follow global standards, say experts
Times of India | 15 July 2024
Kolkata: Scientists and healthcare experts have called for parity between the Indian air quality standard and the World Health Organisation (WHO) standard after the recent Lancet Planetary Health study confirmed mortality even at exposure to low PM 2.5 count. While Indian National Ambient Air Quality standards stipulate the maximum permissible limit of the annual mean concentration of PM2.5 to be 40 microgram/m3 and the 24-hour limit to be 60 microgram/m3, WHO standards are more stringent at 5 microgram/m3 and 15 microgram/m3 respectively.
“It is pointless to make our standard lenient compared to the WHO standard. It stems from our failure to accept pollution as a health issue. There is no health expert in the country’s Clean Air Programme. Thus, setting the standards remains a technical and political issue,” said Arvind Kumar, founder of Lung Care Foundation and chairman of Centre Chest Surgery, at a symposium organized by CMRI Hospital and SwitchON Foundation.
Kumar added, “Twenty-two microgram/m3 of PM 2.5 is equivalent to smoking one cigarette in terms of damage. If the PM 2.5 level reaches 250, it is like smoking 12 cigarettes. A child born in a polluted city, where the PM 2.5 is 250, would have essentially smoked 12 cigarettes on the first day of his/her life. In polluted metros, newborns effectively become smokers, which is why we now see lung cancer in young people due to exposure to air pollution from birth.”
The Lancet Planetary Health study found that each 10 microgram/m3 in short-term PM2.5 exposure was associated with a 1.4% increase in daily deaths. Across 10 cities — Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Che-nnai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Shimla and Varanasi — 33,000 deaths per year can be attributed to air pollution levels above WHO limits. In Kolkata, 4,678 deaths, which comprise 7.3% of all deaths, per year, were attributed to short-term exposure to PM2.5
Pulmonologist Arup Halder said, “We have seen perfect co-relations between the steep surge in patients with breathing ailments and declining air quality. The more distressing fact is that an increasing number of such patients are young children.” Air pollution expert Abhijit Chatterjee of Bose Institute said, “Solid waste burning and biomass burning are the major sources of air pollution in Kolkata at present. These sources are major emitters of carcinogenic components that create high oxidative stress.”
The discussion also explored recent findings and case studies to underscore the urgency of addressing environmental health concerns. By sharing best practices and solutions, attendees learnt about approaches and technology that can mitigate the impact on environmental health.