1,000 Londoners killed in four months by the capital’s toxic air 

Posted on April 29, 2016 by Respro® UK Ltd

The death toll from tiny particulate pollution in London has soared above 1,000 in less than four months this year, shock figures revealed today.

The disclosure sparked fresh calls from campaigners and academics for tougher action from Boris Johnson’s successor and the Government to tackle the “silent killer” of air pollution shortening so many people’s lives in the city.

Clean Air in London estimates that the 2016 death toll attributable to long-term exposure to human-made PM2.5 pollution reached the 1,000 mark on Monday and now stands at more than 1,020.

The campaign group’s founder Simon Birkett said: “This is the single issue where the Mayor has the greatest power to act.

On the 60th anniversary of the Clean Air Act we need to ban diesel vehicles from the most polluted places before 2020, as more than half of Londoners are demanding.”

Scientists say PM2.5 pollution is particularly dangerous as it can get deep into the lungs and seep into the bloodstream — causing heart and lung disease, cancer, and aggravating asthma.

Jonathan Grigg, professor of paediatric respiratory and environmental medicine at Queen Mary University, London, called on the Government to appoint an “air pollution czar” to clean up filthy air in the capital and other towns and cities.

“We live in Europe’s most polluted city,” he said. “Politicians really have got to get a grip on this.

“There is no point waiting 10 years. We have  got a whole generation of children to protect  now.” He stressed that youngsters are especially vulnerable to air pollution, as their lungs are still developing. Some experts blame diesel engines for most PM2.5 pollution generated in the capital.

City Hall, though, stressed that many adverse effects associated with PM2.5 are linked to pollution coming into London from other countries.

A spokeswoman said: “Air quality in London is improving but further measures are needed to tackle this issue fully.”

She emphasised that recent measurements of particulate matter found the greatest improvements are beside busy roads where people are most exposed to pollution.

“This is a result of action to cut emissions, including cleaning up taxis and upgrading the bus fleet and has led to the capital becoming compliant with legal limits for particulate matter for the first time,” she added.

The death toll — the combined total of months of lost life due to PM2.5  pollution among a local population — was highest in Barnet, equating to 47 deaths, followed by Bromley and Croydon on 46 and Ealing on 41.

Pollution levels are higher in central London. But the local totals also depend on the number of residents.

The analysis by Clean Air in London is based on Public Health England figures for local mortality rates linked to PM2.5 pollution.

They show the rate nudging up slightly from 2012 to 2013, the latest available data. Experts believe the combined death toll from nitrogen dioxide and PM2.5 pollution in London is more than 9,000 a year.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Improving air quality is a priority for this government.

“That is why last year we published plans setting out a new programme  of clean air zones which, alongside national action to encourage uptake of low-emission vehicles and continued investment in clean technologies, will create cleaner, healthier air for all.”

Source: 1,000 Londoners killed in four months by the capital’s toxic air | London | News | London Evening Standard

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UK government faces second court battle over air pollution plans 

Posted on April 29, 2016 by Respro® UK Ltd

High court to hear case against government’s ‘woefully inadequate’ plans to tackle air pollution, just a year after losing in the supreme court

The UK government is to be sued in the high court over its air pollution plans, just a year after losing at the supreme court and being ordered to fulfil its legal duty to cut pollution rapidly.

A request for a new judicial review by environmental lawyers at ClientEarth was granted by a judge on Thursday.

ClientEarth argues the government is in breach of its legal duty to produce new air quality plans to cut pollution to legal levels in the “shortest possible time”, despite being ordered to do so by the supreme court in 2015. The development puts the spotlight on the environment secretary, Liz Truss, who is named as the defendant in the new case.

Air pollution was called a “public health emergency” by MPs on Wednesday, and causes 40,000-50,000 early deaths every year. A report from two Royal Colleges of medicine estimated the cost of the damage at £20bn a year.

A deadline for the UK to meet EU air quality rules was missed in 2010 but the plan put forward by the government after losing at the supreme court would not cut pollution to legal levels until 2025 in some cities.

“The government’s new plans to tackle air pollution are woefully inadequate and won’t achieve legal limits for years to come,” said ClientEarth lawyer Alan Andrews. “The longer they are allowed to dither and delay, the more people will suffer from serious illness or an early death.”

“Today’s decision means we will be returning to court to demand that ministers respect our right to breathe clean air,” Andrews said. “The health evidence is mounting and, as we saw yesterday, MPs from across the political spectrum agree with us that the government is not doing enough.”

Mary Creagh MP, chair of the environmental audit committee, which is currently investigating air pollution, said: “The government has dragged its feet on tackling air pollution and that is simply not good enough. It is about time the government set out a clear, comprehensive plan to go much further, much faster.”

A spokeswoman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Our plans clearly set out how we will improve the UK’s air quality through a new programme of Clean Air Zones, which alongside national action and continued investment in clean technologies will create cleaner, healthier air for all. We cannot comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”

The MPs’ report said the government needed to do much more, including introducing a scrappage scheme for old, dirty diesel vehicles, giving dozens of cities stronger powers to deter polluting vehicles with charging schemes and acting to cut pollution from farms.

“There is clear consensus that the government’s plans are wholly inadequate to address this public health crisis,” said Kerry McCarthy, Labour’s shadow environment secretary. “It should not take legal action to force the environment secretary to take urgent action and help save lives.”

Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: “This is the second time the government has been taken to court over air pollution. They must now take immediate action to prevent people being needlessly killed by the air they breathe. Air pollution affects everyone [and] it has greatest impact on the most vulnerable – children, the elderly, and those with lung conditions.”

The government has been accused of trying to bury the news of its air pollution plans. The government released a draft of the plan required by the supreme court on the Saturday in September on which Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour party. The final plan was published on “take out the trash day” in December, along with dozens of other ministerial statements and many hundreds of government documents.

Source: UK government faces second court battle over air pollution plans | Environment | The Guardian

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Even a little air pollution may have long-term health effects on developing fetus 

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Respro® UK Ltd

Even small amounts of air pollution appear to raise the risk of a condition in pregnant women linked to premature births and lifelong neurological and respiratory disorders in their children, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests.

Fine particles from car exhaust, power plants and other industrial sources are breathed into the lungs, but the scientists have now found evidence of the effects of that pollution in the pregnant women’s placentas, the organ that connects her to her fetus and provides blood, oxygen and nutrition. They found that the greater the maternal exposure to air pollution, the more likely the pregnant women suffered from a condition called intrauterine inflammation, which can increase the risk of a number of health problems for her child from the fetal stage well into childhood.

The researchers, reporting online April 27 in Environmental Health Perspectives, say the findings add to the growing evidence that the air a pregnant woman breathes could have long-term health consequences for her child and that current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency air pollution standards may not be stringent enough to protect her developing fetus.

“Twenty years ago, we showed that high levels of air pollution led to poor pregnancy outcomes, including premature births. Now we are showing that even small amounts of air pollution appear to have biological effects at the cellular level in pregnant women,” says the study’s senior author, Xiaobin Wang, MD, ScD, MPH, the Zanvyl Krieger Professor and Director of the Center on the Early Life Origins of Disease at Bloomberg School.

Says the study’s lead author Rebecca Massa Nachman, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Bloomberg School: “This study raises the concern that even current standards for air pollution may not be strict enough to protect the fetus, which may be particularly sensitive to environmental factors. We found biological effects in women exposed to air pollution levels below the EPA standard.”

For the study, researchers analyzed data from 5,059 mother-child pairs in the Boston Birth Cohort, a predominantly low-income minority population. They assessed the presence of intrauterine inflammation based on whether the mother had a fever during labor and by looking under a microscope at the placenta, which was collected and preserved after birth. They assessed maternal exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution using data from EPA air quality stations located near the mothers’ homes. Boston, where the women lived, is known as a relatively clean city when it comes to air pollution. The majority of the women in the study were exposed to air pollution below the level that EPA deems acceptable, fewer than 12 micrograms per cubic meter. A subset of 1,588 women (or 31 percent) were exposed to air pollution at or above the EPA standard.

The researchers found that pregnant women who were exposed to the highest levels of air pollution were nearly twice as likely as those exposed to the lowest levels to have intrauterine inflammation and it appeared that the first trimester might be a time of highest risk. These results held up even when researchers accounted for factors including smoking, age, obesity and education levels.

Intrauterine inflammation is one of the leading causes of premature birth, which occurs in one of every nine births in the United States and one in six African-American births, the researchers say. Babies born prematurely can have lifelong developmental problems. Researchers have linked preterm birth to both autism and asthma.

While maternal exposure to air pollution during pregnancy is associated with adverse birth outcomes, the biological mechanism has not been well understood. There are few outward signs of intrauterine inflammation in most women. But the researchers say that the placenta — which is typically discarded after birth — offered vital clues to the condition and could be the source of other important health information.

“The placenta may be a window into what is going on in terms of early life exposure and what it means for future health problems,” Wang says. “This organ is discarded, but testing it is non-invasive and could be a valuable source of all kinds of environmental information.”

Source: Even a little air pollution may have long-term health effects on developing fetus — ScienceDaily

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Delhi’s Air Quality Plunges 

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Respro® UK Ltd

Delhi’s air quality plunged today with monitoring stations recording this month’s highest level surface-level ozone and a spike in respirable pollutants.

The air quality across the national capital was ‘very poor’.

According to SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research), the eight-hour average of ozone touched 80 parts per billion (ppb), almost breaching the moderate category.

The monitoring stations of Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) located in East Arjun Nagar, Punjabi Bagh, RK Puram and Shadipur listed ozone as the most prominent pollutant around 8 PM.

Ground-level ozone, as opposed to stratospheric ozone which shields the earth from ultra-violet rays, is a product of chemical reaction between oxides of nitrogen (NOX) and carbon monoxide (CO) among others in the presence of strong sunlight.

Delhi Pollution Control Committee’s RK Puram monitoring station had PM 2.5 and PM 10 at an alarming 293 and 941 micrograms per cubic metre (ug/m3), as against their safe limits of 60 and 100 respectively.

The average readings of PM 2.5 and PM 10 were 132.3 and 244.6 ug/m3 respectively according to Centre’s SAFAR agency.

In a statement, TERI said the 24-hourly concentrations of both the fine pollutants violated the safe limits at most stations across the NCR.

“The PM 2.5 concentrations were 1.4-3.1 times above the prescribed standards while PM 10 levels showed higher violation of 1.8-4.1 times of the standard,” it said.

Source: Delhi’s Air Quality Plunges | News World India

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NASA CSI: On the Trail of a Hazy Global Killer 

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Respro® UK Ltd

For more than three decades NASA has focused its space-faring skills and science chops CSI-like on an elusive global killer. Later this month, that pursuit takes us to East Asia. In a few years, part way to the moon.

Spacecraft orbiting Earth can provide global views of the ebb and flow of different types of air pollution, but getting down to the local scale where people live and breathe can be a challenge. This map shows concentrations of nitrogen dioxide in the lower atmosphere as detected by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument aboard the Aura satellite. Credits: NASA

Air pollution causes an estimated 152,000 deaths a year across the Americas and more than 2 million deaths in the Western Pacific, according to the United Nations. Some parts of the world have a detailed view of local air quality from ground sensor networks and forecast models that generate public alerts. But for much of the world this type of information and warning are not available.

Space offers a tantalizing global solution.

Spacecraft orbiting Earth hundreds or thousands of miles away with instruments to track pollutants – the way weather satellites watch clouds and storms – could benefit people worldwide. And if scientists had the global facts about air pollution and could better unravel the complex ebb and flow and mixing of pollutants from different sources, there would be a more solid scientific foundation for smart strategies to cut air pollution.

NASA and other spacefarers are working toward just such a future, but it’s not a simple job.

NASA took its first steps to probe the composition of Earth’s atmosphere in the 1970s, capitalizing on its success building weather satellites and exploring the atmospheres of Venus and Mars. The environmental challenge that drove the agency was the thinning of Earth’s protective ozone layer in the stratosphere.

Detecting clear signs of ozone depletion proved extremely difficult. It demanded rock-solid measurements of minute quantities over a decade or more to observe a trend and ultra-sensitive measurements to determine the cause.

To tackle the problem, NASA built a rigorous in-house science infrastructure to develop new space sensors, fly airborne field experiments to directly sample the atmosphere, conduct laboratory work and comparisons of data from space- and ground-based instruments and develop computational models. This investment paid off, and with new space-based measurements scientists can now see the first signs of the ozone layer healing.

But probing air pollution at the bottom of the atmosphere where people live and breathe was a tougher problem. Ozone, for example, a harmful pollutant, is less than one-tenth as abundant at the surface as it is in the stratosphere where it protects us from the sun’s ultraviolet rays. The satellite instruments NASA has used most to study ozone look down through miles of atmosphere and register the total amount of ozone in the entire column of air beneath below, but they don’t detect exactly where that ozone is.

Scientists can’t directly detect pollution gases and particles with their space instruments. Most sensors work by taking in a jumbled spectrum of light scattered or absorbed when sunlight interacts with molecules and particles. Each pollutant has a unique “spectral” fingerprint that scientists tease out of the atmospheric soup with algorithms they continually fine-tune.

Starting in the 1990s, NASA began producing a wealth of global air quality data from sophisticated new space sensors. With the launch of the Earth Observing System fleet of multi-instrument satellites designed for a broad range of Earth sciences, scientists could document regional trends in carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and particulates. Pollution plumes from cities and forest fires could be seen moving downwind hundreds of miles.

NASA scientists continued to grapple with the inherent difficulties of making these space measurements as reliable as possible, sponsoring global networks of ground sensors and elaborate airborne field experiments to ground-truth the new satellite data.

Since the early 2000s, NASA has partnered with air quality professionals to put this satellite data to work protecting public health.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now routinely incorporates satellite estimates of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) at the surface into nationwide air quality maps for areas with sparse ground-based monitoring. State air quality managers are using NASA satellite and airborne data and the insights they yield about local pollution conditions to develop more accurate local air quality forecasts and alerts.

NASA is now taking its pursuit of this lethal global health hazard to a new level with a trio of science and technology projects. The first begins next week in the skies over South Korea.

A joint field study by NASA and the Republic of Korea will spend about six weeks collecting data from three aircraft, ground sites, ships and satellites to advance the ability to monitor air pollution more accurately from space. The Korean Peninsula offers a robust natural laboratory for air quality scientists with a mix of sources, including the megacity of Seoul, pollution blown across borders, seasonal fires and desert dust.

Findings from this Korea U.S.-Air Quality (KORUS-AQ) study will play a key role in the development of a new international observing system that will combine ground and space-based sensors with computer models to provide improved air quality assessments.

A constellation of next-generation sensors that will orbit 22,000 miles above Earth – one-tenth the distance to the moon – and provide unprecedented views of major air pollutants across the Northern Hemisphere is being built by NASA, South Korea and the European Space Agency.

The NASA contribution called TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) will collect hour-to-hour air pollution measurements over North America from a fixed position directly over this hemisphere. The international constellation of three separate sensors is slated to be in operation by 2022.

Just last month NASA gave the green light to a new space mission that targets how airborne particles are harming people in major cities around the world. The MAIA sensor (Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols) will analyze the sizes, compositions and quantities of particulate air pollution. Scientists will combine that information with public health records to probe connections between particulate pollution and specific health impacts, such as adverse cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and premature deaths.

The work continues on this grand challenge of bringing the vantage point of space to bear on global air pollution. By helping to create a more comprehensive measurement system that combines the unique vantage point from space with ground-based measurements, NASA is contributing its expertise to the long-term improvement of public health around the world from the effects of air pollution.

Source: NASA CSI: On the Trail of a Hazy Global Killer | NASA

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Paris introduces once a month ban on cars in bid to tackle air pollution 

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Respro® UK Ltd

The Champs-Elysees – often described as ‘world’s most beautiful avenue’ – will soon be closed to traffic once a month as the city tackles its air pollution problem.

The famous boulevard, along with four other areas, is one of nine new routes which will be car-free on the first Sunday of every month, joining 13 others already announced as part of the cities ‘Paris Breathes’ campaign.

Another four zones will also be pedestrian-only on Sundays, but just during summer months.

The initiative, which will launch on 8 May – the second Sunday of the month due to a public holiday on 1 May – is part of a drive by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo to reduce air pollution and smog in the city.

The first Sunday of the month also happens to be the day when the city’s national museums have free entry.

Oliver Hayes, a Friends of the Earth air pollution campaigner, told The Independent: “Paris is in the fast lane in the race to tackle dirty air; from car free days, plans to phase out dirty diesel buses, and restrictions on traffic when congestion is high.”

He suggested London could learn a few lessons from the Paris example. “In London, which suffers some of the worst pollution in Europe, a traffic free day would be a welcome start,” he said.

“But we’re going to need much more than one day to prevent the thousands of early deaths each year caused by air pollution. London’s mayor has the powers to restrict diesel traffic on the worst pollution days. Boris Johnson’s successor must use them.

“The next mayor must also accelerate the conversion of London’s iconic red buses to electric or hybrid vehicles and introduce a much bigger, tougher Clean Air Zone than what’s currently proposed.

“Bad air effects everyone, causing more early deaths than everything other than smoking. As the VW scandal has shown, car manufacturers are not doing anything like enough to curb deadly diesel emissions. At the very least, the Government must introduce a diesel scrappage scheme to help drivers switch to cleaner vehicles.”

The new measures in Paris are largely the result of a successful car-free Sunday in the city on 27 September last year. Between 9am and 4pm cars were banned in some key areas of the city, including the Champs-Elysees.

According to air quality network Airpartif, which monitors pollution levels in Paris, there was a 40 per cent drop in harmful exhaust emissions in parts of the city.

In March last year the air pollution reached such high levels a one-day ban on all cars with odd-numbered registrations was announced, halving the amount of vehicles in the city from 5am and significantly reducing the harmful emissions.

Mrs Hidalgo, who has prioritised combating pollution in the city, won a long running battle with the French government for the right to introduce similar emergency measures in the event of any future air pollution spikes.

Source: Paris introduces once a month ban on cars in bid to tackle air pollution | Europe | News | The Independent

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MPs: UK air pollution is a ‘public health emergency’ 

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Respro® UK Ltd

Cross-party committee of MPs says the government needs to do much more to tackle the crisis, including a scrappage scheme for dirty old diesel cars

Air pollution in the UK is a “public health emergency”, according to a cross-party committee of MPs, who say the government needs to do much more including introducing a scrappage scheme for old, dirty diesel vehicles.

The government’s own data shows air pollution causes 40,000-50,000 early deaths a year and ministers were forced to produce a new action plan after losing a supreme court case in 2015.

But the MPs’ heavily critical report, published on Wednesday, says even more action is required to tackle the crisis, such as giving dozens of cities which currently suffer illegal levels of air pollution stronger powers to deter polluting vehicles with charges.

Vehicle exhausts are a major cause of air pollution and the Guardian revealed on Saturday that 97% of all modern diesel cars emit more toxic NOx pollution than the official limit when driven on the road. A less comprehensive government investigation came to a similar conclusions.

In February, UK ministers backed more realistic EU regulations but these still allow new vehicles to emit double the official limit until 2021 and 50% more afterwards. The MPs report says ministers must instead “argue robustly” for lower limits in future.

“The government must act now to tackle this public health emergency,” says the report from the environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) select committee, which is chaired by Conservative MP Neil Parish. “Poor air quality is damaging the UK’s environment and harming the nation’s health: emissions have declined significantly over many decades, but not far enough to prevent the early deaths of 40-50,000 people each year.”

Alan Andrews, a lawyer at ClientEarth which defeated the government in the supreme court in 2015, said: “We’ve been telling the government it needs to act on air pollution for five years. Due to our legal case, the government was ordered to act. Now, almost a year on, a cross-party group of MPs has told the government it must get a grip. It seems there is near unanimous agreement on the need for urgent action from everyone other than the ministers responsible for dealing with our toxic air.”

“It’s time for the government to act in the interests of our health,” said Andrews. “Instead, ministers are championing weak emissions standards for cars and trying to get major air pollutants from agriculture dropped from European laws.”

A spokeswoman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which is responsible for air quality, said: “Tackling air quality is a priority for this government and our plans set out how we will achieve this through continued investment in clean technologies and by encouraging the uptake of low emission vehicles.”

She said councils already have the power to charge polluting vehicles though the government was only requiring its use in five cities. The MPs said these powers are neither strong enough nor easy enough for local authorities to use effectively.

ClientEarth previously called the government’s latest plan “an insult to those being made sick and dying from air pollution” and is mounting a new legal challenge.

The MPs’ report adds to mounting pressure for a diesel scrappage scheme to help clean up the roads. It has already been backed by air quality experts at Kings College London, London mayor, Boris Johnson, and another committee of MPs.

The Efra committee says the financial incentives to trade in vehicles should target those older than 10 years old. The government ran a£300m car scrappage scheme in 2009, in order to boost the recession-hit motor industry.

Parish said existing subsidies for clean vehicles were welcome but added: “More action is needed if we are to get older, more polluting diesel vehicles off the road quickly. People need more of an incentive.”

However, the RAC Foundation said taking 400,000 diesel cars of the road with £2,000 incentive could cost £800m but only cut diesel emissions by 3%. Steve Gooding, RAC Foundation director, said: “The big problem is that not only have the oldest diesel cars failed to live up to official environmental standards, so too have many more recent ones.”

The most recent Defra air quality plan includes Clean Air Zones for five cities – Birmingham, Derby, Leeds, Nottingham and Southampton – where councils will impose charges on polluting vehicles to discourage them from coming into city centres. London already has plans for an Ultra Low Emissions Zone to take effect in 2020.

But, referring to other polluted cities, the MPs cited evidence from the Institute for Air Quality Management, which said “if councils were able to solve air quality problems using [existing] powers…. they would have done so already”.

Air pollution involves not only Defra but also transport, health and other departments. However, the MPs report is deeply critical of overall government efforts: “Despite mounting evidence of the costly health and environmental impacts of air pollution, we see little evidence of a cohesive cross-government plan.”

London’s smoggy skyline seen from Richmond park, January 2016.

London’s smoggy skyline seen from Richmond park, January 2016. Photograph: Gill Allen/REX/Shutterstock

It says the group tasked with co-ordinating efforts, led by Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin, is seen as “secretive” and “does not publish information on its meetings, outcomes or action plans.”

The MPs’ report also says farmers must step up action to cut pollution. A study in September indicated that the air pollution from farms, which reacts with traffic fumes in cities to produce tiny particles, was the ultimate cause of half the premature deaths.

The MPs said Volkswagen, the company which used cheat devices to fool emissions tests on its vehicles, should pay out to people who bought the cars: “Where proven to have misled customers, the company should pay appropriate compensation.”

Richard Howard, from thinktank Policy Exchange, welcomed the new report, but said: “It could go even further by making the case for wider fiscal reforms – for example changes to road tax and company car tax to dis-incentivise diesels.”

Jenny Bates, Friends of the Earth air pollution campaigner, said: “Dirty air is already the nation’s biggest killer after smoking. The solutions are out there but we need the government to listen to MPs and campaign groups and take more urgent action now.”

Source: MPs: UK air pollution is a ‘public health emergency’ | Environment | The Guardian

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Delhi on top of air pollution list according to WHO report 

Posted on April 26, 2016 by Respro® UK Ltd

A new World Health Organisation (WHO) report says an estimated 12.6 million or (1.26 crore) people are dying each year globally from ‘unhealthy environment’ alone.

Air pollution woes in Delhi and other Indian cities stubbornly refuse to go away. A new World Health Organisation (WHO) report says an estimated 12.6 million or (1.26 crore) people are dying each year globally from ‘unhealthy environment’ alone. This is one of every four casualty across the globe.

Of these, two thirds, or 8.2 million (82 lakh), deaths are from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as strokes, heart attacks, cancers and chronic respiratory ailments only.

The lion’s share of this mortality is borne by Southeast Asia, which as per the UNO’s public health wing is seeing 3.8 million deaths annually. India is the largest country in WHO’s denomination of Southeast Asia which also covers Bangladesh, Bhutan, North Korea, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste.

While fortunately, the overall figure has climbed down from 13 million deaths in the last WHO report in 2006, the devil lies in the detail. It says though “deaths from infectious diseases such as diarrhoea and malaria, arising from poor water and sanitation have declined…those attributable to air pollution, have gone up”.

Predictably, children and elders are the worst-affected. The report says annually, deaths of 1.7 million children (under the age of 5) and 4.9 million adults (between ages 50 to 75) could be prevented through better environmental management. Lower respiratory infections mostly impact children under the age of 5, while older people are impacted by other NCDs, it underlines.

In 2014, a WHO ‘air quality database’ of 1,600 cities and 91 countries declared Delhi as the worst polluted in the world, sparking off a big public debate. It ranked Karachi (117 ug/m3), Dhaka (86 ug/m3) and even Beijing (56 ugm/m3) above Delhi’s air quality level in terms of Particulate Matter 2.5 concentration. PM 2.5 is an ultrafine dust which permeates into the lower lung system, eventually entering the bloodstream and causing asthma, heart attacks and cancer. The WHO standard for it is just 10 ug/m3 annually.

Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General, said, “A healthy environment underpins a healthy population. If countries do not take action to better environments where people live and work, millions will continue to become ill and die too young.” At least 21.8 per cent of the disease burden in Disability-adjusted Life Years (DALYs) was also attributed to environmental factors by the report.

Dr Maria Neira, WHO Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health, commented, “By 2050, the proportion of people living in cities is expected to grow to two in three people. Cities are not known as healthy places. Heavy traffic, limited green spaces, air pollution, noise and violence all deteriorate our health. ”

She highlighted, “Many cities have already begun devising strategies to reduce environmental risk. In 2011, the City of Cape Town, South Africa, launched a new bus rapid transit system called MyCiti. It connects to a network of cycling paths and upgraded walkways, making it possible to walk or cycle to a bus stop in an integrated fashion.”

Plus, she added, all low- and middle income countries must start using cleaner fuels for cooking. It would result in reductions in acute respiratory infections, chronic respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases and burns – all at once. “It would result in millions worth of healthcare savings too,” she pointed out.

Source: Delhi on top of air pollution list according to WHO report : Mail Today, News – India Today

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