New Delhi: IQAir, a Swiss company, released its World Air Quality Report for 2021 and found that air pollution in India worsened for the first time in three years.
Previously, air quality had improved for three years, but now the average for lethal and microscopic PM2.5 pollution is more than ten times what the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends.
India failed to meet the WHO standard.
In North India, Delhi is the most polluted city for the fourth straight year, with pollution rising by almost 15% compared to last year.
It is estimated that the air pollution levels here were almost twenty times higher than WHO safety limits, with the average annual level of PM2.5 at 96.4 micrograms per cubic meter. The safe limit is 5.
Delhi ranks fourth in terms of air pollution globally, but the most polluted place is Bhiwadi in Rajasthan, followed by Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh. Ten of the top 15 most polluted cities are in India, most of them in Delhi.
India topped the polluted places list with 63 cities. More than half of these are in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
The University of Chicago developed an air quality 'life index' that finds that residents of Delhi and Lucknow could live up to a decade longer if air quality levels met WHO standards.
In addition to vehicular emissions, coal-fired power plants, industrial waste, and biomass combustion for cooking, the construction industry contributes to air pollution.
For the first time, several large power plants around Delhi, as well as many industries, were shut down in November last year due to high levels of air pollution.
Over $150 billion is estimated to be India's annual economic cost of the crisis. The health effects are far worse, with an estimated three deaths per minute from air pollution alone, as well as heart and lung diseases.
The air pollution levels in the six metro areas, except for Chennai, rose last year.
In addition to Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai, government data for 2021 also shows an improvement in air quality.
As per a note published in parliament, 'poor' to 'severe' air quality days numbered 168 in Delhi last year, up from 139, a 21 per cent jump in one year; Kolkata had 83 such days compared to 74 last year and Mumbai had 39 compared to 20.
A few years ago, the center had dismissed such a ranking, saying it was largely based on satellite and other secondary data that had not been "properly validated."
The company says its data is based "exclusively" on sensors on the ground and that almost half of the sensors are operated by government agencies globally.
Smoke from crop-burning after the rice harvest is particularly mentioned in the report, as it is a politically sensitive issue with many parties reluctant to take action against farmers.
Smoke from rice fields near Delhi during the winter months can account for up to 45 per cent of Delhi's pollution. Farmers do this as a result of a short period between harvest and sowing the next crop.
The important thing to note is that both Punjab and Delhi are governed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the same party which governed both places in 2014-15 when WHO ranked Delhi as the most polluted city in the world.
The majority of crop-burning occurs in Punjab, so the attention now is on what the AAP will do to reduce air pollution this year.
Manish Sisodia, leader of the AAP and Delhi Deputy Chief Minister, told that farmers should not be viewed as liabilities after their recent win in Punjab.
According to IQAir, air quality in China continued to improve in 2021. The report indicates that emission control and reduction of coal power plant activity are driving this improvement.