While the smog-shrouded skyline of Beijing has received considerable attention in recent years, the rapidly worsening air quality in the Indian capital of Delhi has officials calling for drastic measures to address the growing public health emergency. In a new report submitted to the Supreme Court on Friday, the country’s Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority urged the court to order all schools in Delhi closed on days when air pollution levels pose a threat to public health. The report also called for new restrictions on vehicles, such as increasing the tax on diesel cars and banning all private vehicles on high air pollution days, the Daily Mail reported. A World Health Organization study of 1,600 cities found that Delhi’s annual average concentration of PM2.5 — small, airborne particles like soot — was 153 micrograms, the highest of any city in the world. Patna, another Indian city, was close behind with an average of 149 micrograms. The WHO’s “safe” limit for PM2.5 concentrations is 25 micrograms. These small particles, the result of combustion from vehicles, power plants, and other industrial activities, pose a particularly severe threat to public health because they can lodge deep in the lungs and can penetrate the bloodstream, causing lung cancer and heart disease. A 2013 report by the WHO’s Global Burden of Disease project linked more than 1.2 million premature deaths in China to PM2.5 pollution, and a WHO analysis released in April estimated that outdoor air pollution was responsible for the deaths of approximately 3.7 million people under the age of 60 in 2012. While the WHO’s findings are troubling for India, a new study from U.S. and Indian scientists suggests that the air quality in New Delhi is even worse than previous estimates... More...
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 20:48:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015