India has the most polluted cities, yet the world doesn't pay attention

BY HUIZHONG WU

While Beijing's residents can now breathe a little easier after days of dangerous smog, Delhi's residents are still enmeshed in a haze that offers no relief.

Last weekend, as a gray smog converged onto Beijing, news headlines andsocial media users all focused on Beijing's   highest air pollution level in over a year. Yet, while the U.S. Embassy's reading of Beijing's air pollution on Monday found a measure of more than 600, it measured an off the charts 999in New Delhi on its air quality index just two days prior. Further while Beijing's smog has since blown away, Delhi's air quality measure on Friday is still in the "very unhealthy" range at 224.

SEE ALSO: As Delhi leaves Beijing behind in air pollution levels, High Court describes city as "gas chamber"

Indian cities don’t get as much attention as Chinese cities do with respect to air pollution, said Anmol Vanamali, a senior fellow at the Worldwatch Institute. Yet, it is clear that Indian cities are just as, if not more, polluted.

According to the World Health Organization's data from 2014, Delhi was ranked as having the highest PM 2.5 levels in the world. Smaller than 2.5 microns in width, PM 2.5 particles are particularly dangerous to human health because they are small enough that they can lodge into a person's lungs. This specific type of pollution has been linked to premature death in people with heart or lung disease and to heart attacks.

Awareness of this matter in India lags far behind. Yet, with air pollution tied to 3.7 million premature deaths worldwide in 2012, awareness becomes more and more important, for all countries — developing and developed.

"Not enough people know how bad the air is because there is inadequate monitoring and reporting," said Anjali Jaiswal, director of the India Initiative at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in an email. "Monitoring is the first step India needs to take to address air quality challenges and protect the public. You cannot control what you do not measure."

India has lagged in its monitoring of the air pollution data, partly because air pollution is traditionally perceived as a problem for developed countries, said Angel Hsu, a professor of environmental studies at Yale University. Countries like India, that are still developing, have only started recording air pollution data recently.

What's more, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week underscored his belief that developed nations that have been contributing to climate change for longer should shoulder a bigger burden to eradicate it than developing countries like India.

"Climate change is a major global challenge. But it is not of our making. It is the result of global warming that came from prosperity and progress of an industrial age powered by fossil fuel,” he said Monday as global leaders prepared for a major climate conference in Paris.

While the U.S. Embassy has maintained an air pollution monitor in China since 2008, it was only in February 2015 that the embassy has started to monitor the air quality in other countries, like India. India launched its own national initiativeto monitor air quality in April 2015, a boost to Indian cities who already collected their own data.

There is also a difference in the level of knowledge and concern among local residents. "I think the level of awareness is completely disparate between citizens in new Delhi and other cities of India" compared with citizens in China, said Angel Hsu, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Yale University.

The level of awareness is also seen in the details of daily life. In China, it's common to find air filters in department stores that advertise how they remove PM 2.5. In India, Hsu said, she has not seen air filters being sold.

Social media engagement in China also leads to an intensification of the scrutiny, she pointed out. This was evident in China's recent days of pollution as users took to Weibo, a popular microblog, to talk about their own experiences with air pollution and make memes.

What's perhaps even more troubling though, Vanamali points out, is that Beijing's air pollution can be attributed mainly to the industrial output from nearby factories. Delhi is not ringed by industrial factories in the same way. That's why, the Chinese government was able to produce "blue sky days"during the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, because they halted industrial production for the days leading up to it. "I don’t think you can manipulate that with Delhi," he said, noting that Delhi's pollution comes from inefficiencies in personal and commercial transport.

Delhi is, however, catching up. Local elites have started to speak up on this issue. One designer even created a series of fashionable air masks meant to filter out the harmful PM 2.5 particles.

"You can’t buy outdoor air," said Indiana University professor Anthony Liu, who studied air pollution in China. "The universality of it makes it something that affects all people and makes it a common denominator for every single human being."

http://mashable.com/2015/12/04/india-china-air-pollution/#HrpqQb9wtOqx