12 ms·

Delhi’s air is so toxic that schools are closing, expats are fleeing

163 points by enra 10y ago

gnipgnip 10y ago
I fear we are rapidly approaching a Malthusian urban die-off; almost unimaginable that this won't happen if once we get past peak-oil.
philippnagel 10y ago
What's the current state of air cleaning technology? Plants (e.g. moss), or did someone engineer something more efficient already?
- X86BSD 10y ago
  That's a good question. I'm not sure at this point if you could deploy enough of them to make a dent. Even if you could magically ban all polluting industry tomorrow unless scrubbers were installed within 30 days and all cars were burning natgas I don't know if it would be enough. At some point real soon I imagine water is going to start reaching toxic levels from rain pulling all the toxins out of the sky. And then ecosystems starting to collapse.
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    Someone should design a bacteria that can eat pollution.
    - X86BSD 10y ago
      If I remember right but I may not be I think I have read they found one that eats arsenic. I'm going to have to double check that though.
      - ars 10y ago
        Arsenic is an element, you can eat it, but it's still there, just inside the bacteria. However different compounds of arsenic have different toxicity - elemental arsenic is most toxic, organic arsenic less so, so perhaps that's what they do - convert it to a less toxic form. Interestingly mercury is the opposite - elemental mercury isn't very toxic (because it's a metal and just doesn't absorb, it just stays as a clump of metal). But organic mercury is very toxic because the organic part makes it available to interfere with biological processes.
  - ars 10y ago
    > water is going to start reaching toxic levels from rain pulling all the toxins out of the sky Nah, that stuff in the sky is mostly carbon (from burning straw, and other low temperature fires) which is not toxic to drink (in fact at low levels it makes water taste sweet) and perhaps some random hydrocarbons which would rapidly decompose. The worse stuff is various nitrogen compounds (acid rain), but even those don't accumulate in water. Those are made in engines, not from regular fires. Drinking and breathing have very different profiles for what is toxic.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Outdoors: prevention. Eliminating major pollution sources is what matters most. A good rain helps. India's major population centers face a similar problem to Los Angeles: they're backed by a major mountain range (the Himalaya) which tends to bottle-up pollution. The second problem is that there are are roughly 30x the people living in that area (~500 million vs. ~15 million for LA). Indoors: it depends on the specific threats you're looking to eliminate. Generally these include: 1. Particulates. A HEPA or electrostatic filter should help. 2. Ozone: Houseplants. 3. Other contaminants, including sulfer oxides and nitrogen oxides: possibly activated charcoal or zeolite. See: https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/indoors/air/ozone_generating_air_cleaners.htm https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/indoors/air/ozone_ge...
X86BSD 10y ago
My wife is from noida, a suburb of Delhi. Her mother, brother and other family live there in the NCR area. We talked to her mom two days ago and she says it's so bad now she can't even see the road when she goes out in an auto. Her brothers latest post to Facebook is "feeling suffocated! Have to get out of this city!" When I was there two years ago, my first time in India, I had no idea what to expect. The second the plane landed and we were pulling up to the gate my very first comment was "Do you smell something burning?" To my wife. The second I got into the concourse I knew what it was. The airport was filled with smog. It was a little shocking. The fact that it's gotten so much worse that two years later you can't even see the road is mind blowing. I thought kejriwals plan for limiting the roads to odd plate numbers one day then even the next was a good idea to help cut the pollution. The problem was apparently the people, just like here, hated it because it was his plan and not modi's, plus the people never would have followed it because well the saying cutting your nose off to spite your face is appropriate here. The people won't tolerate that inconvenience even though they are literally killing themselves. The wife's mother retires in august. She has two months of vacation built up. We told her to simply take the two months come June and move here to the states. China has bad pollution problems to deal with too. But man looking at India you can see an absolute failure of government to serve the people. There are too many people in their cities. Delhi is a mess. Bangalore as well. I don't know exactly what indias energy supplies look like but they are certainly past a redline where petrol burning vehicles should be banned. Things moved over to natgas or major mass transit infrastructure should have been the primary focus decades ago. I can see how it hasn't been though with the astonishing level of corruption and nationalism preventing foreign companies from coming in and investing and solving some of their problems. It's so sad. I loved the country. It's beautiful. With such character, potential, and such life! But it's just become such a cesspool. Homelessness, corruption, rapes, pollution, human trafficking, poverty. Law enforcement is a joke and couldn't enforce anything in that country. If you get hit by a car and it's a life threatening injury, say your prayers because you are dead. Help will never reach you in time. There are no traffic laws, none that anyone there follows, no one moves for emergency vehicles, it's dog eat dog. Brutal. It's almost my definition of a failed state. I think the good nature of the people is the only thing keeping it from the giant flush of collapsing civilization.
- 10y ago
SingAlong 10y ago
I just got back from Delhi. I started coughing as soon as I landed in the airport 4 days ago. The air is almost unbreatheable. However, the working-class people I've come across don't seem to be worried about it from a health perspective (or they don't show it off). Infact my friend's wedding had a lot of crackers. Life as usual for them. For a comparison, here's what Red Fort looks like at 4pm, 05-NOV-2016 (my pic is about 30hrs older than this comment): https://twitter.com/HashNuke/status/795380966109810688 https://twitter.com/HashNuke/status/795380966109810688 And this is what it is supposed to look like: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wheresmichi/433396865/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/wheresmichi/433396865/
- bjelkeman-again 10y ago
  In 1995 I went to downtown LA. The air looked like your picture of the Red Fort. In LA at the time I could not see more than 2/3 of a mile. The air burned the back of my throath when breathing.
  - SingAlong 10y ago
    I've never been to the US. Wow, that is 2 decades ago. Does LA still have such issues? If not, how did they improve the air quality?
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      https://www.marketplace.org/2014/07/14/sustainability/we-used-be-china/la-smog-battle-against-air-pollution https://www.marketplace.org/2014/07/14/sustainability/we-use... > It took decades. Los Angeles had its first real smog attack during World War II, a smog strong enough that some people suspected a Japanese chemical attack. But it wasn’t until 1975 that the U.S. required new cars to have catalytic converters, “the key piece of technology that allowed everything to change,” according to Mary Nichols, chairman of California’s Air Resources Board.
      - riteshkpr 10y ago
        Were 'catalytic converters' technology a known solution at the time? I wonder if there is a known solution to the smog problem faced by Indian and Chinese cities. Or is the solution yet to be discovered. It feels like (after having lived there) these cities have crossed the threshold for number of people/cars/houses/offices per unit area and the way forward is to force expansion of cities - - reduce number of high rises that can be built - reduce number of cars that can be produced or sold - force/incentivize offices and industries to move out of these big cities - large, safe and economical state owned public transport
bfrog 10y ago
We are after all our own worst enemies
toyg 10y ago
It's not surprising that China, India and other developing countries are going through the same pains "the West" experienced up to 20 years ago - which stopped right about the time we outsourced our most polluting industries to... China, India and other developing countries. What is interesting is watching how they try to fix it. There was much noise about pollution during the Beijing Olympics - how is the situation there, right now? Can it be a model for Delhi? Will these countries have to walk the same path we did, or will technology let their manufacturing capabilities survive?
- edblarney 10y ago
  " are going through the same pains "the West" experienced up to 20 years ago" 20 years? Ha ha ... No, this was a problem that started with the industrial revolution, and policies were introduced to fix the issues shortly thereafter. 18th-century UK was probably the first bit of 'overt environmental problems', the Thames was a mess, smog everywhere ... But it was addressed long, long ago. Different strokes for different folks in different times ... but it doesn't take 'high tech' to have decent policy that addresses these issues. India has some pretty deep problems, this is only one of many symptoms.
  - gnipgnip 10y ago
    Not true. Lakes and Rivers all over the US (and Japan) were badly polluted and frothing in the 60s.
    - edblarney 10y ago
      I'm not saying they weren't! I'm saying that 'environmental consciousness' as a civic issue started in London in the early 19th century, not '20 years ago'. By the time pollution was bad from the plastic-chemical revolutions of the 1960's there was already a conscientiousness very well developed. One major difference: the pollution from coal in the industrial age was visible. From the 1950's chemical revolution - it was not. And so it wasn't evident to the average person that the pollution was 'hurting'. Much like smoking - it takes some science etc. to show it's bad.
habosa 10y ago
I've never been to Delhi, I don't have plans to go, so I can't really explain why this makes me so angry. It's the tragedy of the commons, an entire city of people slowly killing each other. What's going on over there? Can anyone who knows more about India explain why the people and the government would let things get like this? To pollute our own towns to the point of suffocation says something terrible about human nature.
- accurrent 10y ago
  It's easy to blame the people and the gov't for pollution, but having lived in both India and China the story is quite different. You have swathes of population that need employment . In order to keep the economy productive you have to have manufacturing activity. To support the manufacturing activity one must produce energy. Naturally coal being abundant and cheap becomes the first choice for governments to use for energy production. While we can criticise the coal plants for being polluting without them there is no source of employment. Most renewables are too expensive/unreliable to use and nuclear power plants alway come along with a lot of controversy. Another thing to note is that the overall pollution per capita in India or China is far less than any of the western nations. Its just that these countries have way too many people in too less space. As for schools closing due to pollution, I can say that this is common all across asia. The thing is many of the industries that pollute go unchecked partly due to corruption and partly due to the fact that if they are fined they will just withdraw from the area of operation causing many to loose their means of living. In a place like india this becomes a question of life or death because many earn too less to save enough. The question that lies ahead is more "how can we solve this issue" than to lay blame. Perhaps the government needs to look at what the pollution is made up of and specifically target those industries.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    > Another thing to note is that the overall pollution per capita in India or China is far less than any of the western nations. This isn't true, not for the type of pollution relevant to this discussion anyway (particulates suspended in air). A single two stroke moped releases 10-1000X the amount of air pollution per kilometer as a modern car with a catalytic converter, despite the latter being much larger. India is full of such mopeds. Here's a study about them: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4749 http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4749 The figure you cited, that citizens of developed nations pollute more than citizens of developing nation , is specifically a statistic about carbon dioxide emissions. Most other kinds of pollution are worse per capita in developing industrial nations owing to less strict emissions controls.
noipv4 10y ago
I was in Delhi during the diwali celebrations. The air smells like half-burned logwood. I initially thought that someone in the neighbourhood has lit fallen leaves on fire. Little did I know that farmers all around the city are lighting crop stubbles. Come diwali eve and the air turned acrid, a poisonous cocktail of burnt diesel particles, smoke and smell of burnt gun-powder. It was a real Nasty experience (it's way worse than my experience in Inland Empire CA in summer). Even Google weather shows the weather condition as "smoke".
- canttestthis 10y ago
  Not all around the city. There aren't any farms in the Metro area. It's the neighboring states' farms that are burning crops.
nodesocket 10y ago
Just finished watching the film Before The Flood and the representative from India's Centre For Science and Environment really frustrated and upset me. She was blaming US consumption as the source of the problem and how we don't practice what we preach. Our air is not poisonous, we don't have 300 million citizens without power living in poverty. The US has some of the best and greatest companies working on energy (see Tesla) and it is time India stop blaming the US and start putting in the work on their own. See the following short clip from the film: https://youtu.be/90CkXVF-Q8M?t=36m2s https://youtu.be/90CkXVF-Q8M?t=36m2s
- legolas2412 10y ago
  Even on absolute levels, India's pollution is a fraction of US. US also still gets 60% electricity from fossil fuels. It is time US fixes their science and education when a major political candidate and half of their population are climate change deniers. Oh, and they are the most polluting in the world, even in per capita numbers. PM2.5 and PM10 corruption are dangerous only for people in the region and are not responsible for global warming, which affects everyone. In essence, India is killing its own people and US is killing everyone.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    > Even on absolute levels, India's pollution is a fraction of US. I don't think this is true for particulate pollution. You may only be talking about carbon dioxide. Also, "Somewhere else is worse" isn't a good defense, especially when it may not even be true; it's just deflection. India has a real problem here with air pollution, and pointing fingers at other nations won't fix it.
    - legolas2412 10y ago
      No denying there is a problem and that we should work on a solution, it is just getting media attention now. Politicians now are under public pressure to fix it. The person I replied to was saying that India's PM2.5 pollution is equatable to CO2 pollution done by the US. Which is really not true, plus he saw that opinion in a documentary about climate change. Which would be a valid opinion.
jakozaur 10y ago
PM10, PM2.5 is different from other pollution like CO2. CO2 is causing a lot of damage for the whole planet in long run, but in short it is neutral for local communities. Still getting off CO2 is a challenge that we don't have a good answer to (but working on it). PM10, PM2.5 are air debris which are causing a lot of damage to people around, but don't have long term global impact. With current technologies most of the first world countries are able to keep them at low level even with significant fossil fuel usage. The key is to have cars with good emission standards, heat systems with efficient burning cycles, air particle filters... PM10, PM2.5 you can feel, CO2 is invisible to our senses. I was shocked how heavy New Delhi air is when I visited this year. They are trying to fix by using more CNG vehicles, but with current income level and crumbling infrastructure it will most likely take decades.
sandGorgon 10y ago
Again, the most interesting part of the news has been left out - http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/world/asia/farmers-unchecked-crop-burning-fuels-indias-air-pollution.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/world/asia/farmers-unch... In fact, thus article could be termed as fairly incorrect. The pollution exists, but the reasoning is wrong. The firecracker usage this year was much less than last year because of a lot of pollution campaigns. The problem is millions of tons of agricultural waste being burned in neighboring states. It's an interesting problem to which there is no ready answer. The govt is trying to introduce "seeders" which can help farmers plant their farms without burning older waste... but it's too expensive for the poor farmers to adopt. Some of us are thinking about how to cobble together seeders using old tractor parts,etc. TLDR - if you know a cheap way to plant in fields, without burning the hay of the last crop, you will solve the North Indian pollution problem to a large degree. Other problems exist - but that is being addressed.
- viraptor 10y ago
  It's mentioned in the article. In section "The road to hell": > “Fireworks during Diwali marginally added to the pollution… But other things inside Delhi did not drastically change. So the smog is mainly due to smoke from farm fires,” Kejriwal said. > Every year around this time, farmers in Punjab and Haryana—the predominantly agricultural states to the west and northwest of Delhi—burn the leftover straw in their rice and wheat fields. This is the cheapest way to prepare the land for the next season of sowing.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    The same thing has with palm oil plantations in Malaysia. It effects the air quality as far away as Singapore: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/nov/11/indonesia-forest-fires-explained-haze-palm-oil-timber-burning https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/nov/11...
gnipgnip 10y ago
Other than the doom and gloom, what is the standard practice in other paddy growing regions in Asia and India ? If the state really wanted to help, they'd do well to believe their word is that of the God, and actively help with practices. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Crop-fires-already-on-in-Punjab-Haryana-satellite-pictures-show/articleshow/54860196.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Crop-fires-already-...
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leafee 10y ago
I just came to visit New Delhi from the US and the air is indeed horrible. Visibility is very low and it's not the usual winter fog. My eyes are itchy and am developing some sinus headache. (I'm not generally susceptible to any respiratory issues). Masks have all sold out. Reported PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels have reached new records. One newspaper showed that the levels for some metrics are how high that the usual meters are all maxed out and can't even measure it.
whack 10y ago
It's worth keeping in mind that urban activity accounts for only ~20℅ of the particulate matter in Delhi. Take a look at the following graph. Other major Indian cities like Mumbai are run very similarly to Delhi, and yet, their levels are 80℅ lower. http://qz.com/829182/this-one-chart-shows-delhis-apocalyptic-pollution-compared-to-the-rest-of-india/ http://qz.com/829182/this-one-chart-shows-delhis-apocalyptic... There was a more detailed article I read a few months ago (nytimes?) that went into the geographical details of how regional airflow and weather patterns play a major role in explaining the huge variation you see in the above chart.

163 points by enra 10y ago

I fear we are rapidly approaching a Malthusian urban die-off; almost unimaginable that this won't happen if once we get past peak-oil.

philippnagel 10y ago

What's the current state of air cleaning technology? Plants (e.g. moss), or did someone engineer something more efficient already?

X86BSD 10y ago
That's a good question. I'm not sure at this point if you could deploy enough of them to make a dent. Even if you could magically ban all polluting industry tomorrow unless scrubbers were installed within 30 days and all cars were burning natgas I don't know if it would be enough. At some point real soon I imagine water is going to start reaching toxic levels from rain pulling all the toxins out of the sky. And then ecosystems starting to collapse.
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  Someone should design a bacteria that can eat pollution.
  - X86BSD 10y ago
    If I remember right but I may not be I think I have read they found one that eats arsenic. I'm going to have to double check that though.
    - ars 10y ago
      Arsenic is an element, you can eat it, but it's still there, just inside the bacteria. However different compounds of arsenic have different toxicity - elemental arsenic is most toxic, organic arsenic less so, so perhaps that's what they do - convert it to a less toxic form. Interestingly mercury is the opposite - elemental mercury isn't very toxic (because it's a metal and just doesn't absorb, it just stays as a clump of metal). But organic mercury is very toxic because the organic part makes it available to interfere with biological processes.
- ars 10y ago
  > water is going to start reaching toxic levels from rain pulling all the toxins out of the sky Nah, that stuff in the sky is mostly carbon (from burning straw, and other low temperature fires) which is not toxic to drink (in fact at low levels it makes water taste sweet) and perhaps some random hydrocarbons which would rapidly decompose. The worse stuff is various nitrogen compounds (acid rain), but even those don't accumulate in water. Those are made in engines, not from regular fires. Drinking and breathing have very different profiles for what is toxic.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Outdoors: prevention. Eliminating major pollution sources is what matters most. A good rain helps. India's major population centers face a similar problem to Los Angeles: they're backed by a major mountain range (the Himalaya) which tends to bottle-up pollution. The second problem is that there are are roughly 30x the people living in that area (~500 million vs. ~15 million for LA). Indoors: it depends on the specific threats you're looking to eliminate. Generally these include: 1. Particulates. A HEPA or electrostatic filter should help. 2. Ozone: Houseplants. 3. Other contaminants, including sulfer oxides and nitrogen oxides: possibly activated charcoal or zeolite. See: https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/indoors/air/ozone_generating_air_cleaners.htm https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/indoors/air/ozone_ge...

X86BSD 10y ago

My wife is from noida, a suburb of Delhi. Her mother, brother and other family live there in the NCR area. We talked to her mom two days ago and she says it's so bad now she can't even see the road when she goes out in an auto. Her brothers latest post to Facebook is "feeling suffocated! Have to get out of this city!" When I was there two years ago, my first time in India, I had no idea what to expect. The second the plane landed and we were pulling up to the gate my very first comment was "Do you smell something burning?" To my wife. The second I got into the concourse I knew what it was. The airport was filled with smog. It was a little shocking. The fact that it's gotten so much worse that two years later you can't even see the road is mind blowing. I thought kejriwals plan for limiting the roads to odd plate numbers one day then even the next was a good idea to help cut the pollution. The problem was apparently the people, just like here, hated it because it was his plan and not modi's, plus the people never would have followed it because well the saying cutting your nose off to spite your face is appropriate here. The people won't tolerate that inconvenience even though they are literally killing themselves. The wife's mother retires in august. She has two months of vacation built up. We told her to simply take the two months come June and move here to the states. China has bad pollution problems to deal with too. But man looking at India you can see an absolute failure of government to serve the people. There are too many people in their cities. Delhi is a mess. Bangalore as well. I don't know exactly what indias energy supplies look like but they are certainly past a redline where petrol burning vehicles should be banned. Things moved over to natgas or major mass transit infrastructure should have been the primary focus decades ago. I can see how it hasn't been though with the astonishing level of corruption and nationalism preventing foreign companies from coming in and investing and solving some of their problems. It's so sad. I loved the country. It's beautiful. With such character, potential, and such life! But it's just become such a cesspool. Homelessness, corruption, rapes, pollution, human trafficking, poverty. Law enforcement is a joke and couldn't enforce anything in that country. If you get hit by a car and it's a life threatening injury, say your prayers because you are dead. Help will never reach you in time. There are no traffic laws, none that anyone there follows, no one moves for emergency vehicles, it's dog eat dog. Brutal. It's almost my definition of a failed state. I think the good nature of the people is the only thing keeping it from the giant flush of collapsing civilization.

10y ago

SingAlong 10y ago

I just got back from Delhi. I started coughing as soon as I landed in the airport 4 days ago. The air is almost unbreatheable. However, the working-class people I've come across don't seem to be worried about it from a health perspective (or they don't show it off). Infact my friend's wedding had a lot of crackers. Life as usual for them. For a comparison, here's what Red Fort looks like at 4pm, 05-NOV-2016 (my pic is about 30hrs older than this comment): https://twitter.com/HashNuke/status/795380966109810688 https://twitter.com/HashNuke/status/795380966109810688 And this is what it is supposed to look like: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wheresmichi/433396865/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/wheresmichi/433396865/

bjelkeman-again 10y ago
In 1995 I went to downtown LA. The air looked like your picture of the Red Fort. In LA at the time I could not see more than 2/3 of a mile. The air burned the back of my throath when breathing.
- SingAlong 10y ago
  I've never been to the US. Wow, that is 2 decades ago. Does LA still have such issues? If not, how did they improve the air quality?
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    https://www.marketplace.org/2014/07/14/sustainability/we-used-be-china/la-smog-battle-against-air-pollution https://www.marketplace.org/2014/07/14/sustainability/we-use... > It took decades. Los Angeles had its first real smog attack during World War II, a smog strong enough that some people suspected a Japanese chemical attack. But it wasn’t until 1975 that the U.S. required new cars to have catalytic converters, “the key piece of technology that allowed everything to change,” according to Mary Nichols, chairman of California’s Air Resources Board.
    - riteshkpr 10y ago
      Were 'catalytic converters' technology a known solution at the time? I wonder if there is a known solution to the smog problem faced by Indian and Chinese cities. Or is the solution yet to be discovered. It feels like (after having lived there) these cities have crossed the threshold for number of people/cars/houses/offices per unit area and the way forward is to force expansion of cities - - reduce number of high rises that can be built - reduce number of cars that can be produced or sold - force/incentivize offices and industries to move out of these big cities - large, safe and economical state owned public transport

bfrog 10y ago

We are after all our own worst enemies

toyg 10y ago

It's not surprising that China, India and other developing countries are going through the same pains "the West" experienced up to 20 years ago - which stopped right about the time we outsourced our most polluting industries to... China, India and other developing countries. What is interesting is watching how they try to fix it. There was much noise about pollution during the Beijing Olympics - how is the situation there, right now? Can it be a model for Delhi? Will these countries have to walk the same path we did, or will technology let their manufacturing capabilities survive?

edblarney 10y ago
" are going through the same pains "the West" experienced up to 20 years ago" 20 years? Ha ha ... No, this was a problem that started with the industrial revolution, and policies were introduced to fix the issues shortly thereafter. 18th-century UK was probably the first bit of 'overt environmental problems', the Thames was a mess, smog everywhere ... But it was addressed long, long ago. Different strokes for different folks in different times ... but it doesn't take 'high tech' to have decent policy that addresses these issues. India has some pretty deep problems, this is only one of many symptoms.
- gnipgnip 10y ago
  Not true. Lakes and Rivers all over the US (and Japan) were badly polluted and frothing in the 60s.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    I'm not saying they weren't! I'm saying that 'environmental consciousness' as a civic issue started in London in the early 19th century, not '20 years ago'. By the time pollution was bad from the plastic-chemical revolutions of the 1960's there was already a conscientiousness very well developed. One major difference: the pollution from coal in the industrial age was visible. From the 1950's chemical revolution - it was not. And so it wasn't evident to the average person that the pollution was 'hurting'. Much like smoking - it takes some science etc. to show it's bad.

habosa 10y ago

I've never been to Delhi, I don't have plans to go, so I can't really explain why this makes me so angry. It's the tragedy of the commons, an entire city of people slowly killing each other. What's going on over there? Can anyone who knows more about India explain why the people and the government would let things get like this? To pollute our own towns to the point of suffocation says something terrible about human nature.

accurrent 10y ago
It's easy to blame the people and the gov't for pollution, but having lived in both India and China the story is quite different. You have swathes of population that need employment . In order to keep the economy productive you have to have manufacturing activity. To support the manufacturing activity one must produce energy. Naturally coal being abundant and cheap becomes the first choice for governments to use for energy production. While we can criticise the coal plants for being polluting without them there is no source of employment. Most renewables are too expensive/unreliable to use and nuclear power plants alway come along with a lot of controversy. Another thing to note is that the overall pollution per capita in India or China is far less than any of the western nations. Its just that these countries have way too many people in too less space. As for schools closing due to pollution, I can say that this is common all across asia. The thing is many of the industries that pollute go unchecked partly due to corruption and partly due to the fact that if they are fined they will just withdraw from the area of operation causing many to loose their means of living. In a place like india this becomes a question of life or death because many earn too less to save enough. The question that lies ahead is more "how can we solve this issue" than to lay blame. Perhaps the government needs to look at what the pollution is made up of and specifically target those industries.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  > Another thing to note is that the overall pollution per capita in India or China is far less than any of the western nations. This isn't true, not for the type of pollution relevant to this discussion anyway (particulates suspended in air). A single two stroke moped releases 10-1000X the amount of air pollution per kilometer as a modern car with a catalytic converter, despite the latter being much larger. India is full of such mopeds. Here's a study about them: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4749 http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4749 The figure you cited, that citizens of developed nations pollute more than citizens of developing nation , is specifically a statistic about carbon dioxide emissions. Most other kinds of pollution are worse per capita in developing industrial nations owing to less strict emissions controls.

noipv4 10y ago

I was in Delhi during the diwali celebrations. The air smells like half-burned logwood. I initially thought that someone in the neighbourhood has lit fallen leaves on fire. Little did I know that farmers all around the city are lighting crop stubbles. Come diwali eve and the air turned acrid, a poisonous cocktail of burnt diesel particles, smoke and smell of burnt gun-powder. It was a real Nasty experience (it's way worse than my experience in Inland Empire CA in summer). Even Google weather shows the weather condition as "smoke".

canttestthis 10y ago
Not all around the city. There aren't any farms in the Metro area. It's the neighboring states' farms that are burning crops.

nodesocket 10y ago

Just finished watching the film Before The Flood and the representative from India's Centre For Science and Environment really frustrated and upset me. She was blaming US consumption as the source of the problem and how we don't practice what we preach. Our air is not poisonous, we don't have 300 million citizens without power living in poverty. The US has some of the best and greatest companies working on energy (see Tesla) and it is time India stop blaming the US and start putting in the work on their own. See the following short clip from the film: https://youtu.be/90CkXVF-Q8M?t=36m2s https://youtu.be/90CkXVF-Q8M?t=36m2s

legolas2412 10y ago
Even on absolute levels, India's pollution is a fraction of US. US also still gets 60% electricity from fossil fuels. It is time US fixes their science and education when a major political candidate and half of their population are climate change deniers. Oh, and they are the most polluting in the world, even in per capita numbers. PM2.5 and PM10 corruption are dangerous only for people in the region and are not responsible for global warming, which affects everyone. In essence, India is killing its own people and US is killing everyone.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  > Even on absolute levels, India's pollution is a fraction of US. I don't think this is true for particulate pollution. You may only be talking about carbon dioxide. Also, "Somewhere else is worse" isn't a good defense, especially when it may not even be true; it's just deflection. India has a real problem here with air pollution, and pointing fingers at other nations won't fix it.
  - legolas2412 10y ago
    No denying there is a problem and that we should work on a solution, it is just getting media attention now. Politicians now are under public pressure to fix it. The person I replied to was saying that India's PM2.5 pollution is equatable to CO2 pollution done by the US. Which is really not true, plus he saw that opinion in a documentary about climate change. Which would be a valid opinion.

jakozaur 10y ago

PM10, PM2.5 is different from other pollution like CO2. CO2 is causing a lot of damage for the whole planet in long run, but in short it is neutral for local communities. Still getting off CO2 is a challenge that we don't have a good answer to (but working on it). PM10, PM2.5 are air debris which are causing a lot of damage to people around, but don't have long term global impact. With current technologies most of the first world countries are able to keep them at low level even with significant fossil fuel usage. The key is to have cars with good emission standards, heat systems with efficient burning cycles, air particle filters... PM10, PM2.5 you can feel, CO2 is invisible to our senses. I was shocked how heavy New Delhi air is when I visited this year. They are trying to fix by using more CNG vehicles, but with current income level and crumbling infrastructure it will most likely take decades.

sandGorgon 10y ago

Again, the most interesting part of the news has been left out - http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/world/asia/farmers-unchecked-crop-burning-fuels-indias-air-pollution.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/world/asia/farmers-unch... In fact, thus article could be termed as fairly incorrect. The pollution exists, but the reasoning is wrong. The firecracker usage this year was much less than last year because of a lot of pollution campaigns. The problem is millions of tons of agricultural waste being burned in neighboring states. It's an interesting problem to which there is no ready answer. The govt is trying to introduce "seeders" which can help farmers plant their farms without burning older waste... but it's too expensive for the poor farmers to adopt. Some of us are thinking about how to cobble together seeders using old tractor parts,etc. TLDR - if you know a cheap way to plant in fields, without burning the hay of the last crop, you will solve the North Indian pollution problem to a large degree. Other problems exist - but that is being addressed.

viraptor 10y ago
It's mentioned in the article. In section "The road to hell": > “Fireworks during Diwali marginally added to the pollution… But other things inside Delhi did not drastically change. So the smog is mainly due to smoke from farm fires,” Kejriwal said. > Every year around this time, farmers in Punjab and Haryana—the predominantly agricultural states to the west and northwest of Delhi—burn the leftover straw in their rice and wheat fields. This is the cheapest way to prepare the land for the next season of sowing.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  The same thing has with palm oil plantations in Malaysia. It effects the air quality as far away as Singapore: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/nov/11/indonesia-forest-fires-explained-haze-palm-oil-timber-burning https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/nov/11...

gnipgnip 10y ago

Other than the doom and gloom, what is the standard practice in other paddy growing regions in Asia and India ? If the state really wanted to help, they'd do well to believe their word is that of the God, and actively help with practices. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Crop-fires-already-on-in-Punjab-Haryana-satellite-pictures-show/articleshow/54860196.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Crop-fires-already-...

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leafee 10y ago

I just came to visit New Delhi from the US and the air is indeed horrible. Visibility is very low and it's not the usual winter fog. My eyes are itchy and am developing some sinus headache. (I'm not generally susceptible to any respiratory issues). Masks have all sold out. Reported PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels have reached new records. One newspaper showed that the levels for some metrics are how high that the usual meters are all maxed out and can't even measure it.

whack 10y ago

It's worth keeping in mind that urban activity accounts for only ~20℅ of the particulate matter in Delhi. Take a look at the following graph. Other major Indian cities like Mumbai are run very similarly to Delhi, and yet, their levels are 80℅ lower. http://qz.com/829182/this-one-chart-shows-delhis-apocalyptic-pollution-compared-to-the-rest-of-india/ http://qz.com/829182/this-one-chart-shows-delhis-apocalyptic... There was a more detailed article I read a few months ago (nytimes?) that went into the geographical details of how regional airflow and weather patterns play a major role in explaining the huge variation you see in the above chart.