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| Smog blanketed New Delhi in
2016. About 1.1 million people die prematurely in India every year from
the effects of air pollution.
Credit
Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
NEW DELHI — India’s rapidly worsening air pollution is causing about 1.1 million people to die prematurely each year and is now surpassing China’s as the deadliest in the world, a new study of global air pollution shows.
The
number of premature deaths in China caused by dangerous air particles,
known as PM2.5, has stabilized globally in recent years but has risen
sharply in India, according to the report, issued jointly on Tuesday by
the Health Effects Institute, a Boston research institute focused on the
health impacts of air pollution, and the Institute of Health Metrics
and Evaluation, a population health research center in Seattle.
India
has registered an alarming increase of nearly 50 percent in premature
deaths from particulate matter between 1990 and 2015, the report says.
“You
can almost think of this as the perfect storm for India,” said Michael
Brauer, a professor of environment and health relationships at the
University of British Columbia and an author of the study, in a
telephone interview. He cited the confluence of rapid industrialization,
population growth and an aging populace in India that is more
susceptible to air pollution.
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| An Indian farmer walked through his field after burning his crops. A court has ruled that farmers can no longer burn their crops near New Delhi, but many still do. Credit Saurabh Das/Associated Press |
Pollution levels are worsening in India as it tries to industrialize,
but “the idea that policy making should be led by government is
lacking,” Bhargav Krishna, manager for environmental health at the
Public Health Foundation of India, a health policy research center in
New Delhi, said in an interview.
As
air pollution worsened in parts of the world, including South Asia, it
improved in the United States and Europe, the report said, crediting
policies to curb emissions, among other things. The report’s website that provides country-by-country data on pollution levels and the health and mortality effects.
Environmental
regulations in the United States and actions by the European Commission
have led to substantial progress in reducing fine particulate pollution
since 1990, the report said. The United States has experienced a
reduction of about 27 percent in the average annual exposure to fine
particulate matter, with smaller declines in Europe. Yet, some 88,000
Americans and 258,000 Europeans still face increased risks of premature
death because of particulate levels today, the report said.
A
fraction of the width of a human hair, these particles can be released
from vehicles, particularly those with diesel engines, and by industry,
as well as from natural sources like dust. They enter the bloodstream
through the lungs, worsening cardiac disease and increasing the risk of
stroke and heart failure, in addition to causing severe respiratory problems, like asthma and pneumonia.
The report offers good news globally, in some ways.
Although
deaths caused by air pollution grew to 4.2 million in 2015 from 3.5
million in 1990, the rate of increase of about 20 percent was slower
than the rate of the population rise during that time. That’s because of
improved health care in many parts of the world, as well as public
policy initiatives undertaken in the United States, Europe and other
regions that reduced emissions from industrialization, the authors of
the study said in telephone interviews.
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| Villagers near a newly built state-owned coal fired power plant in southern China. Credit Kevin Frayer/Getty Images |
China
also offers an encouraging sign. Premature deaths from particulate
matter each year have stabilized at around 1.1 million since 2005, the
report said. Still, that is an increase of 17 percent since 1990, when
it was a little more than 945,000.
The
health effects of the ultrafine particles are still being studied and
the full effects are only beginning to be understood, said Majid Ezzati,
a global environmental health professor at the Imperial College,
London.
“These
studies are hard to do, and isolating the effects of air pollution is
hard,” Dr. Ezzati said. “The numbers are still dynamic and nobody should
claim an exact number of deaths is known.”
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| The Eiffel Tower seen through a haze of air pollution in Paris last month. The United States and Europe have made good progress in cutting fine particulate air pollution since 1990. Credit Philippe Wojazer/Reuters |
But
if he were an Indian citizen, he said, “I’d say, ‘Let’s not sit there
and do nothing about it. Let’s not be exposed to it today as more
research is being done.’”
Although
few studies of the health problems brought by air pollution are based
in India, Dr. Ezzati said, “it’s hard to imagine air pollution that is
bad for people in London is not bad for people in India.”
Neither India’s environment minister nor its environment secretary could be reached for comment Monday evening.
Robert
O’Keefe, vice president at the Health Effects Institute, said China’s
trajectory on deaths from air pollution had stabilized as a result of
the country’s efforts to reduce air pollution.
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| Emissions from the Kentucky Utilities Ghent Generating Station in Ghent, Ky., in 2014. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times |
India,
on the other hand, had yet to undertake sustained public policy
initiatives to reduce pollution, said Gopal Sankaranarayanan, an
advocate at the Supreme Court of India who successfully petitioned
it to ban licenses to sell fireworks in the New Delhi metropolitan area
last year. Fireworks during the festival of Diwali contributed to
hazardous levels of air pollution late last year.
Weak
environmental regulation in India, he said, leaves India’s citizens
with few alternatives other than to petition the courts to take action
to protect the public’s health.
But
the courts often lack the power or mechanisms to enforce their actions,
he said. India’s environmental court, the National Green Tribunal,
ordered farmers to stop burning their crops in the region around New
Delhi in 2015, but the practice still continued
last year. Smoke from the farm fires contributed about one quarter of
the levels of the most dangerous air pollution in the Indian capital,
environmental experts said.
“If
you can’t enforce the directives of the courts — it becomes a problem,”
Mr. Sankaranarayanan said. “We need practical solutions to save lives
here in India.”
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