In India, air pollution was responsible for 16.7 lakh fatalities in 2019, accounting for 17.8% of all deaths that year. According to a recent analysis on pollution and health published in The Lancet Planetary Health, this country has the highest number of fatalities attributable to air pollution of any country.
According to the paper, which updates a prior analysis from 2015, air pollution alone causes 66.7 lakh deaths globally. In all, pollution caused 90 lakh fatalities in 2019 (equal to one in every six deaths worldwide), a figure that has stayed constant since the 2015 study. Ambient air pollution caused 45 lakh fatalities, hazardous chemical pollutants caused 17 lakh deaths, and lead contamination caused 9 lakh deaths.
PM2.5 pollution was responsible for 9.8 lakh of India’s 16.7 lakh air pollution-related fatalities, while home air pollution was responsible for another 6.1 lakh. Although the number of deaths from pollution sources linked to extreme poverty (such as indoor air pollution and water pollution) has decreased, the report notes that these decreases have been offset by an increase in deaths from industrial pollution (such as ambient air pollution and chemical pollution).
“The World Health Organization (WHO) has significantly tightened its health-based global air quality recommendations, cutting the PM2.5 guideline value from 10 to 5. This indicates that there are very few places in India that adhere to WHO guidelines,” Dr Sundeep Salvi, Chair of the Global Burden of Diseases Study (GBD-19), told The Indian Express. He has nothing to do with The Lancet Planetary Health’s most recent report.
According to the survey, the Indo-Gangetic Plain has the worst air pollution. New Delhi and several of the most polluted cities are located in this region. In India, domestic biomass burning was the leading cause of air pollution mortality, followed by coal combustion and crop burning.
Despite India’s significant efforts to combat home air pollution, especially through the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana programme, the number of deaths remains high. India has established a National Clean Air Programme and a Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region, which was established in 2019. However, India lacks a strong centralised administrative framework to drive its air pollution management efforts, resulting in modest and unequal improvements in overall air quality, according to the research.
Dr. Salvi also mentioned the dangers of lead contamination. “Lead contamination kills an estimated 9 lakh people per year throughout the world, and this figure is likely to be underestimated.” Previously, lead contamination was caused by leaded gasoline, which has now been replaced with unleaded gasoline. Other causes of lead exposure, he claimed, include “unsound recycling of lead-acid batteries and e-waste without environmental controls,” “contaminated spices,” “pottery coated with lead salts,” and “lead in paint and other consumer items.”
“Blood lead concentrations exceeding 5 g/dL are estimated in more than 80 crore children worldwide (India alone contributes 27.5 crore children), which was the intervention concentration defined by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until 2021. He stated, “This concentration has now been lowered to 3.5 g/dL.”
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