Why is India prone to Air Pollution?
Over the last few decades, India has added a new “pollution season” to its calendar and living through it can cut 4–10 years from one’s life. For more than a 100 days, the air in North India turns into poison, reducing lung capacity and inflicting irreversible lifetime damage upon the 300 million+ people living in the region.
According to the database released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) last year, India had the (un)flattering distinction of having 14 of the top 15 most polluted cities in the world, the main culprit being pollution caused by particulate matter (PM).
Particulate matter is not a man-made phenomenon, it also occurs naturally, but in this instance, human activities had severely impacted the air around, by increasing particulate matter levels to unsustainable levels, especially PM2.5 and PM10 sized particulate matter. The number in PM2.5 and PM10 refers to the size of the particles in micro meters. (To know more about the relationship between particulate matter and air pollution, click here)
The first question that would inevitably arise, is the cause: Where is this pollution coming from? Who is responsible for the air we breathe?
These are questions that are often asked, but are generally answered with a “blame-game” mentality, with the general accused ranging from vehicles to industries, “India’s dust” to “India’s monsoons” and of course, the Indian government. If only we found one convenient agent to dump all of the responsibility upon! Unfortunately, the answer to air pollution is not quite so easy. Air flows everywhere and freely, boundaries cannot be built around it and maintained (not yet anyway) like water or land. This exposes air to any and all reactive elements and matter floating around, making it hard to identify a single culprit. But what we can do through this post, is to filter the haze surrounding the question of “Whose Blame is it Anyway?”.
Sources of air pollution in India can be split into natural and man-made/artificial causes, depending upon the main causative agent:
Natural Causes
Natural causes in India are those which are heavily dependent on Indian topology and geographical location. The first major contributor to air pollution is the widespread presence of dust in the air which forms a large chunk of particulate matter (PM10, not PM2.5) present in the air.
- India is generally considered a “dusty country” due to its unique topology; a large amount of rainfall that most of India receives is only during the monsoon season, which is accompanied by the presence of sunny days for the rest of the year. The combination of no-rainfall and sunny days contributes to the large amount of dust in the air, which is further exacerbated by the frequency of dust storms, vehicular movement and lack of tree cover.
- The relationship between changing meteorological conditions and rising air pollution is extremely pivotal. As per a TOI report, changing wind patterns and increased humidity are a major contributor to the increase in pollution in Delhi, especially during the winters.
- Humidity is a naturally occurring factor in coastal cities (such as Chennai or Mumbai) but not so much in landlocked areas such as Delhi, where increase in moisture in the air traps particulate matter. This is true for Chennai and Mumbai as well, but unlike Delhi, these cities are “coastal”, which allows them to depend upon the sea and other wind currents acting like a sink; preventing build up of harmful pollutants in the air by using the coast as an outlet. Delhi on the other hand, is completely landlocked, therefore, when the humid air traps particulate matter, it has nowhere to go since there is not much wind or rainfall which allow the pollutants to get washed/blown away. Reducing the amount of dust in the air would go a long way to reducing air pollution, especially since it is the single largest contributor (56%) of PM10 in the air.
Man-made Causes
That human activities have resulted in a drastic change in our environment should come as no surprise. Air quality is no different in this regard, with industries, farm fires, vehicles and burning of trash releasing harmful gases into the same air which we breathe everyday. These type of activities which are dependent on combustion are the main reason for the high presence of PM2.5 particles, nitrogen oxides (NOx) as well as sulphur dioxides (SO2) in the air.
According to Urban Emissions, an independent research group on air pollution, “more than 95% of emissions from diesel, petrol, and natural gas combustion, open waste burning pollution, biomass burning pollution, and coal combustion at cookstoves and boilers, falls under PM2.5.” As if the widespread release of PM2.5 from commonly occurring sources was not scary enough, PM2.5 can also easily mix with other gases such as sulphates, nitrates and other volatile organic compounds to form even more harmful gases.
Seeing the grave nature of PM2.5, it would be unwise to say that the government is not doing anything to control the spread of pollutants. Burning of trash in public is banned by the government, and initiatives such as the “odd-even policy” in Delhi show that the government is indeed, taking stringent steps to control the issue. But yet, garbage continues to be burnt, whether in landfills or public places, while the “odd-even” ruling was a successful yet ultimately temporary reprieve upon Delhi’s air.
If your first instinct after reading this post is to go online and buy the most heavy-duty air mask available on the market, we don’t blame you. But before you start stressing about which brand to pick, here is some good news. All of these pollutants originate from similar sources and in some way or the other, is dependent upon combustion. Burning any item will lead to either one or all of the pollutants to be released into the air. But on the other hand, putting in place restrictions on one of them can have a butterfly effect on the amount of other pollutants in the air as well.
