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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 peopl

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
      - jschwartzi 10y ago
        The solution was actually legislation and regulation of the auto industry. The legislature in California and (to some extent) the US realized that particulate pollution and smog were major problems in cities, so they passed laws requiring automakers to install equipment that controls emissions. The OBD and OBD II systems, electronic fuel injection, the catalytic converter, and various other systems are a result of that legislative push. If they had left it up to the individual, as India has, we would experience similar air quality. I should add that California has tighter emissions standards than the federal government, and some vehicles will be sold with special emissions control equipment in California. For example, I had a GMC C1500 truck, which shipped with an optional Air Injection Reactor if you bought it in California.
        brianwawok 10y ago
        In fact my lawn mower has 2 models... California and everywhere else.
      - brianwawok 10y ago
        Some of it is money. Installiing California emission equipment to all vehicles would cut pollution a lot... But if it raised vehicle cost by 50%, no one could afford it. I think we know how to fix it, but no one wants to start taking cars away from people or raising the prices 50%.
  - coredog64 10y ago
    I attended elementary school in California in the late 70s/early 80s. We would have smog alerts when the air quality was so bad we couldn't go outside during recess. California has been working on this since the late 60s. They were the first state to require better emissions controls on cars, they have tightened regulations on businesses and industries that would normally negatively contribute, and the push the problems of dirty power generation into other states.
  - beachstartup 10y ago
    yes. it's still terrible all the time. don't ever come to visit or live here. especially not the west side. p.s. it's also overcrowded, and there's no public transit. did i mention the food is terrible?
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      Yes the food is terrible besides the amazing Mexican food, amazing Asian food, Sushi and hamburgers. Check.
      - beachstartup 10y ago
        all of that is better in the bay area. don't ever come to LA if you want good food.
        bogomipz 10y ago
        Can I ask why if you dislike LA so much you choose to be there?
        beachstartup 10y ago
        you new to the internet, buddy?
    - mturmon 10y ago
      And it's full of vacuous entertainment industry people and their hangers-on. Nobody knows how to read books. Only advantage is being able to turn right on red. Sammy Glick, Day of the Locust, Helter Skelter, gag me with a spoon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, earthquakes, wildfires, riots. Bad food. Best to stay far away.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    LA has good days and bad days. Ozone in L.A regularly exceeds federal standards. Air quality advisories throughout the year are not uncommon. This has some relevant statistics from the South Coast Air Quality Management District which is larger larger than just LA County but includes it: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-summer-smog-20160805-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-summer-smog-2016... It's an uphill battle. There are more hybrid vehicles on the road these days and California has pretty stringent emissions requirements, the Dept. of Motor Vehicles requires you to have a smog check every two years on your car. However the population of L.A has been booming for over a decade now and despite investment in mass transit it hasn't put much any appreciable dent in automobile traffic.
  - leafee 10y ago
    Current PM 2.5 level in LA is 74. Current level in Delhi is 500+. The scale is just not comparable. I lived in LA for 3+ years in the 2000s. I just returned to Delhi and the air quality is way, way worse than I have ever experienced, anywhere.
- chimeracoder 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. Delhi and LA have similar problems in that they are both at the foothills of a mountain range (in Delhi it's the Aravali mountains). This makes it much more difficult for the pollution to dissipate once it's there, because the mountains obstruct wind and airflow. LA has been making efforts for decades to reduce emissions, but the payoff has been incredibly slow for this reason. Of course, Delhi is a much larger and densely populated city - the Delhi metro area has almost the same population as the entire state of Texas - and it's also nowhere near as wealthy as LA. All three of those factors make it much harder to address pollution directly and much slower for the benefits to actually start manifesting.
  - randall 10y ago
    Salt Lake City, UT has this same problem. We deal with winter 'inversions', where if it doesn't snow, we get really bad air. http://www.ci.slc.ut.us/winter-inversions-what-are-they-and-what-we-can-all-do-help http://www.ci.slc.ut.us/winter-inversions-what-are-they-and-...
  - mjhoy 10y ago
    I remember visiting Olot, in Catalonia, and thinking the mountains must trap pollution in the valley. It certainly looked striking: http://mjhoy.com/images/barca/10122014-P1200997.jpg http://mjhoy.com/images/barca/10122014-P1200997.jpg
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    >" the Delhi metro area has almost the same population as the entire state of Texas" This is not correct: Texas ~ 27 million Delhi - 18.6 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi
    - nsenifty 10y ago
      Delhi metro area had a population close to 22mn according to 2011 census (from the same link you posted). Texas population of 27mn is a 2014 estimate.
X86BSD 10y ago
The latter is how I remember it at dusk two years ago ween I visited it. Wow. I hope you enjoyed the place as much as I did even with the pollution! I think most there don't really understand the health hazard or how bad it is for them because it's all they know. Put them in Kansas City for a week and send them back and I promise you'll see some people freaking out heh.
- SingAlong 10y ago
  In comparison, I took the pic at 4pm :( Not dusk yet. In my poor design vocabulary, I pointed out at the Sun, and joked to my designer friends that one of them put a vector mask on the Sun. I couldn't go around much after the friend's wedding. I wanted to do a 6am jog at Rajpath and India Gate. But a friend joked that it was pointless to look at "India Gate as a silhouette". At about 1pm when going to Humayun's tomb, I passed by Rajpath and realized it wasn't a joke. I was scared to venture out anymore after a day of roaming. I hope to visit again sometime.
- truncate 10y ago
  >> I think most there don't really understand the health hazard or how bad it is for them because it's all they know. Its not just that. Even if people are aware of health hazards, they think they can make exceptions for themselves because one person isn't gonna make things worse. I lived first half of my life in relatively cleaner Himalayan regions, and when I moved to Delhi, I was almost always sneezing. I already was miserable living there, and now its worse. :(
- in_cahoots 10y ago
  Many of my Indian friends are posting their air-quality readings on Facebook as a sort of macabre competition. The rest of the year isn't nearly this bad, and conditions have gotten much worse in recent years. I think many Indians are well-aware of the problem.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  But by the same token, residents of Los Angeles don't sit around and worry about their air quality either and it's not like they don't know anything else, the city has no shortage of transplants. So no nobody is going to "freak out"
neokya 10y ago
In fact most of South Asian cities are in same dire state. I was in Kathmandu in April and you can hardly breathe not because of smoke but mostly because of dust (as construction for road and water supply is going for a while.) I lived in India and been to Mumbai many times. Man, the whole city stinks.

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
    - jschwartzi 10y ago
      The solution was actually legislation and regulation of the auto industry. The legislature in California and (to some extent) the US realized that particulate pollution and smog were major problems in cities, so they passed laws requiring automakers to install equipment that controls emissions. The OBD and OBD II systems, electronic fuel injection, the catalytic converter, and various other systems are a result of that legislative push. If they had left it up to the individual, as India has, we would experience similar air quality. I should add that California has tighter emissions standards than the federal government, and some vehicles will be sold with special emissions control equipment in California. For example, I had a GMC C1500 truck, which shipped with an optional Air Injection Reactor if you bought it in California.
      - brianwawok 10y ago
        In fact my lawn mower has 2 models... California and everywhere else.
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      Some of it is money. Installiing California emission equipment to all vehicles would cut pollution a lot... But if it raised vehicle cost by 50%, no one could afford it. I think we know how to fix it, but no one wants to start taking cars away from people or raising the prices 50%.
- coredog64 10y ago
  I attended elementary school in California in the late 70s/early 80s. We would have smog alerts when the air quality was so bad we couldn't go outside during recess. California has been working on this since the late 60s. They were the first state to require better emissions controls on cars, they have tightened regulations on businesses and industries that would normally negatively contribute, and the push the problems of dirty power generation into other states.
- beachstartup 10y ago
  yes. it's still terrible all the time. don't ever come to visit or live here. especially not the west side. p.s. it's also overcrowded, and there's no public transit. did i mention the food is terrible?
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Yes the food is terrible besides the amazing Mexican food, amazing Asian food, Sushi and hamburgers. Check.
    - beachstartup 10y ago
      all of that is better in the bay area. don't ever come to LA if you want good food.
      - bogomipz 10y ago
        Can I ask why if you dislike LA so much you choose to be there?
        beachstartup 10y ago
        you new to the internet, buddy?
  - mturmon 10y ago
    And it's full of vacuous entertainment industry people and their hangers-on. Nobody knows how to read books. Only advantage is being able to turn right on red. Sammy Glick, Day of the Locust, Helter Skelter, gag me with a spoon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, earthquakes, wildfires, riots. Bad food. Best to stay far away.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  LA has good days and bad days. Ozone in L.A regularly exceeds federal standards. Air quality advisories throughout the year are not uncommon. This has some relevant statistics from the South Coast Air Quality Management District which is larger larger than just LA County but includes it: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-summer-smog-20160805-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-summer-smog-2016... It's an uphill battle. There are more hybrid vehicles on the road these days and California has pretty stringent emissions requirements, the Dept. of Motor Vehicles requires you to have a smog check every two years on your car. However the population of L.A has been booming for over a decade now and despite investment in mass transit it hasn't put much any appreciable dent in automobile traffic.
- leafee 10y ago
  Current PM 2.5 level in LA is 74. Current level in Delhi is 500+. The scale is just not comparable. I lived in LA for 3+ years in the 2000s. I just returned to Delhi and the air quality is way, way worse than I have ever experienced, anywhere.
chimeracoder 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. Delhi and LA have similar problems in that they are both at the foothills of a mountain range (in Delhi it's the Aravali mountains). This makes it much more difficult for the pollution to dissipate once it's there, because the mountains obstruct wind and airflow. LA has been making efforts for decades to reduce emissions, but the payoff has been incredibly slow for this reason. Of course, Delhi is a much larger and densely populated city - the Delhi metro area has almost the same population as the entire state of Texas - and it's also nowhere near as wealthy as LA. All three of those factors make it much harder to address pollution directly and much slower for the benefits to actually start manifesting.
- randall 10y ago
  Salt Lake City, UT has this same problem. We deal with winter 'inversions', where if it doesn't snow, we get really bad air. http://www.ci.slc.ut.us/winter-inversions-what-are-they-and-what-we-can-all-do-help http://www.ci.slc.ut.us/winter-inversions-what-are-they-and-...
- mjhoy 10y ago
  I remember visiting Olot, in Catalonia, and thinking the mountains must trap pollution in the valley. It certainly looked striking: http://mjhoy.com/images/barca/10122014-P1200997.jpg http://mjhoy.com/images/barca/10122014-P1200997.jpg
- bogomipz 10y ago
  >" the Delhi metro area has almost the same population as the entire state of Texas" This is not correct: Texas ~ 27 million Delhi - 18.6 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi
  - nsenifty 10y ago
    Delhi metro area had a population close to 22mn according to 2011 census (from the same link you posted). Texas population of 27mn is a 2014 estimate.

X86BSD 10y ago

The latter is how I remember it at dusk two years ago ween I visited it. Wow. I hope you enjoyed the place as much as I did even with the pollution! I think most there don't really understand the health hazard or how bad it is for them because it's all they know. Put them in Kansas City for a week and send them back and I promise you'll see some people freaking out heh.

SingAlong 10y ago
In comparison, I took the pic at 4pm :( Not dusk yet. In my poor design vocabulary, I pointed out at the Sun, and joked to my designer friends that one of them put a vector mask on the Sun. I couldn't go around much after the friend's wedding. I wanted to do a 6am jog at Rajpath and India Gate. But a friend joked that it was pointless to look at "India Gate as a silhouette". At about 1pm when going to Humayun's tomb, I passed by Rajpath and realized it wasn't a joke. I was scared to venture out anymore after a day of roaming. I hope to visit again sometime.
truncate 10y ago
>> I think most there don't really understand the health hazard or how bad it is for them because it's all they know. Its not just that. Even if people are aware of health hazards, they think they can make exceptions for themselves because one person isn't gonna make things worse. I lived first half of my life in relatively cleaner Himalayan regions, and when I moved to Delhi, I was almost always sneezing. I already was miserable living there, and now its worse. :(
in_cahoots 10y ago
Many of my Indian friends are posting their air-quality readings on Facebook as a sort of macabre competition. The rest of the year isn't nearly this bad, and conditions have gotten much worse in recent years. I think many Indians are well-aware of the problem.
bogomipz 10y ago
But by the same token, residents of Los Angeles don't sit around and worry about their air quality either and it's not like they don't know anything else, the city has no shortage of transplants. So no nobody is going to "freak out"

neokya 10y ago

In fact most of South Asian cities are in same dire state. I was in Kathmandu in April and you can hardly breathe not because of smoke but mostly because of dust (as construction for road and water supply is going for a while.) I lived in India and been to Mumbai many times. Man, the whole city stinks.