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If you woke up in <keyword id="19900881" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="delhi" source="keywords">Delhi</keyword> recently, you might have noticed more than just the nip in the air – a thick, toxic smog has blanketed the city, turning the air almost unbreathable. On Monday, Delhi’s <keyword id="19920379" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="air-quality-index" source="keywords">Air Quality Index</keyword> (<keyword id="19916482" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="aqi" source="keywords">AQI</keyword>) hit 481, placing it in the "severe plus" category. For context, the “severe” category begins at an AQI of 401, and anything above 450 poses serious health risks even for healthy individuals. According to Swiss group IQAir’s live rankings, Delhi is currently the most polluted city in the world, with an air quality score of 1,081 – a “hazardous” level that is 130.9 times the World Health Organization’s recommended limit for PM2.5. <h3 style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:14pt;margin-bottom:4pt;">Major contributors to Delhi’s smog</h3>The root causes of Delhi’s pollution are manifold: <ul><li>Stubble Burning: On Saturday, crop residue burning contributed 25% of Delhi’s air pollution. By Sunday, this figure had climbed to 40%, according to SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research). Satellites recorded 1,334 stubble-burning incidents in six northern states on Sunday alone, the highest number in four days.</li><li>Vehicles: On Sunday, vehicular emissions accounted for 15.8% of the city’s pollution, according to the Centre’s Decision Support System for Air Quality Management.</li><li>Construction Dust and Industrial Emissions: PM2.5, a deadly pollutant, remains the most prominent factor, capable of penetrating deep into the lungs and leading to severe respiratory and cardiac diseases.</li></ul><h3 style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:14pt;margin-bottom:4pt;"><keyword id="24020184" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="GRAP-Stage-4" source="keywords">GRAP Stage 4</keyword></h3>To combat the rising pollution levels, authorities have enforced Stage 4 of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP). Here’s a breakdown of the restrictions: <ul><li>Vehicle Restrictions:</li><ul><li>Diesel medium and heavy goods vehicles (BS-IV and below) registered in Delhi are banned unless carrying essential goods.</li><li>Non-essential light commercial vehicles from outside Delhi can only enter if they use CNG, BS-VI diesel, or are electric.</li><li>Trucks carrying non-essential items are barred unless they use cleaner fuels like LNG, CNG, or BS-VI diesel. </li></ul><li>Workplace and School Adjustments:</li><ul><li>Classes for students in grades 6 to 9 and class 11 have moved online.</li><li>Offices in the National Capital Region (NCR) are advised to work at 50% capacity, with the rest operating remotely. </li></ul><li>Construction Ban: </li><ul><li>Construction and demolition (C&amp;D) activities have been halted, including large projects like highways, flyovers, and pipelines. </li></ul></ul>Out of Delhi’s 40 monitoring stations, 32 reported AQI levels above 400 on Monday. Visibility in parts of the city dropped to just 100 metres due to the thick smog. The health implications of these numbers are alarming. <keyword id="20118319" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="PM2-5-levels" source="keywords">PM2.5 levels</keyword> in Delhi were recorded at 130.9 times the safe limit set by the WHO. According to experts, long-term exposure to such air quality could lead to an 11% increase in premature mortality rates due to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Studies have shown that Delhi residents may lose an average of 10 years of life expectancy if pollution levels persist. Despite the restrictions, life in Delhi continues under a cloud of smog. Iconic landmarks like India Gate have become barely visible through the haze. While flights and trains are operational, some delays have been reported.

GRAP Stage 4 restrictions take effect as air quality in Delhi deteriorates; PM2.5 levels 130 times higher than WHO limits

A good school for the children, a bungalow in an elegant part of the Indian capital, a job as a freelance writer, a maid, a driver, an inverter for the power cuts, and a water purifying system. These were some of the items Indian expat Jyoti Pande Lavakare ticked off on her list as “done” as she prepared to leave the piercing blue skies of Palo Alto in California to return to New Delhi in June 2009 with her husband Ajay, a technology start-up executive. The move proved smooth. Within months, the household had settled into a new rhythm. They were returning to spend time with their elderly parents and ensure their son, Madhav, and daughter, Naina, both in their early teens, had some “connection” with India, where both Jyoti and Ajay had grown up. They hoped to make them more resilient by teaching them to cope with power cuts, water shortages, and similar hardships. What Lavakare, now in her early 50s, hadn’t bargained for was the poisonous air. The city had a “hidden” secret: its air was fouler than Beijing’s but hardly anyone knew. With every passing winter, the air quality was plummeting. Jyoti Pande Lavakare. “In 2014, I realised something was making us all sick. At my children’s school, children were falling ill constantly. My friends’ children were falling ill. I had a bad asthma attack. When we met other expats, the talk was about what was wrong with the air,” says Lavakare. She thought she was being hypersensitive. Indian friends teased her for having become too “American”. But Lavakare began reading about and researching the air quality and soon became obsessive about the pollution. When the American embassy in Delhi, which had been collecting air quality data but keeping it private, released the figures to the public in 2015, the secret was out. Lavakare was right to be obsessed: New Delhi’s pollution was off the charts, registering 222 during US President Barack Obama’s visit in January 2015. Readings from 151 to 200 are considered unhealthy, and any above that very unhealthy, meaning “health warnings of emergency conditions”. The Indian capital’s residents were living in a gas chamber. In January 2015, Bloomberg quoted David Spiegelhalter, a University of Cambridge statistician, as saying that, by visiting the capital and breathing its air for just three days, Obama might have cut six hours from his expected lifespan. New York Times correspondent Gardiner Harris (a neighbour of Lavakare’s in Sunder Nagar) wrote a quietly impassioned article on how he was leaving New Delhi after his young son suffered a horrifying asthma attack. Breathing the air was the equivalent of smoking 44 cigarettes a day, according to the independent Berkeley Earth science research group. “At first I was in denial. Had I brought my children back to India to breathe pure poison and harm their lungs? But when the data started coming out … I knew we were in a crisis,” says Lavakare. She bought face masks and air <keyword id="2029750" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="purifiers">purifiers</keyword>, but that was only dealing with her own patch. Angry at the horror of the city’s 20 million residents breathing filthy air, she co-founded Care for Air in 2015 with other professionals, as a platform to build awareness that the city was in the midst of a “public health emergency” and to lobby for clean air. With her colourful silk saris and long wavy hair, pushed back by her glasses, Lavakare is now well-known as an expert on air pollution; she is invited to join television debates. She is unimpressed with the measures the New Delhi government has just announced to “minimise” (no one is talking of eliminating) the pollution this winter that turns the capital into a kind of “air gulag”, thick with tiny particles known as PM2.5 which damage not just respiratory systems, as many seem to think – but many other human organs too. The quality of October’s air plunged to “poor” even before Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights when the bursting of firecrackers makes the “normal” pollution many times worse. On some days in late October, the state-run Central Pollution Control Board’s air quality index stood at around 300 – six times the recommended level. The index has risen as high as 999 after Diwali for two consecutive years. This year, the government began putting tougher measures in place. Under its Graded Response Action Plan, drivers are allowed to use their cars every other day, depending on whether their number plates end in an odd or even number, to limit vehicle emissions; people found burning waste are fined; bus and metro services are increased; the use of diesel generators has been banned; and water sprinklers and mechanical sweepers will be used to deal with the construction dust and debris that is responsible for the bulk of the pollution. <h2 style="margin-top: 1.14286rem; margin-bottom: 0.428571rem; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 1.71429rem; line-height: 2.21429rem; font-family: Merriweather, serif; vertical-align: baseline;">At first I was in denial. Had I brought my children back to India to breathe pure poison and harm their lungs?Jyoti Pande Lavakare</h2> By getting the doctors on Care for Air’s board to appear on television to talk about its effects, visiting schools to educate children, and galvanising the media to cover the subject, the group has succeeded in raising public awareness and making people, even the poor, demand action. You can see the difference in the booming sales of air purifiers and face masks. “When people first began wearing masks a few years ago, people used to stare. It seemed odd. Or they’d cross the street, thinking the person was contagious. Now no one thinks twice about wearing a mask,” says Mukesh Nath, a chemist in Sarai Jullena. For Lavakare, the fight for the right to breathe clean air has become fused with her personal life. She’s not worrying about her children – Naina has gone to Barnard College in New York, where she is studying sociology, and Madhav, currently on a gap year, has been accepted by Yale University in Connecticut. It’s more that, while she was campaigning and lobbying against pollution, it sneaked into her family, devastating it. Jyoti Pande Lavakare (left), her late mother Kamale Pande and father Jagdish Chandra Pande. Photo: courtesy of Lavakare family She had returned to India to spend time with her parents. But over a year ago, her mother, Kamale Pande, a classical vocalist and non-smoker, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. She had no family history of the disease and was otherwise in excellent health. Suddenly, all those abstract statistics were embodied in her own mother’s lungs. Specialists linked the disease directly to <keyword id="55910" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Air-Pollution">air pollution</keyword> and Lavakare has no doubt at all about the causal link. In her book Choked, published this year, Beth Gardiner wrote: “You see one person run over in the street and you’ll never forget it, but thousands dying from the effects of dirty air will never even faze you.” Lavakare’s mother died last year. Trying to process her grief is one reason Lavakare is working on her own book, called Breathing Here is Injurious to Your Health, to be published next year. It’s the story of her relationship with her dying city, with pollution, her mother’s suffering and on what can be done to spare Indians from pollution’s catastrophic impact. The fight for clean air is going to be prolonged. Misleading statistics have to be contested, for one. The Delhi government recently issued full-page advertisements to trumpet how air pollution had been cut by 25 per cent thanks to its efforts. <h2 style="margin-top: 1.14286rem; margin-bottom: 0.428571rem; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 1.71429rem; line-height: 2.21429rem; font-family: Merriweather, serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes, I wish we hadn’t given up our green cardJyoti Pande Lavakare, who returned to India with her family from Palo Alto, California, in 2009</h2> “Experts agree that there is no data available – at least in the public domain – that clearly validates the claim. It doesn’t mean the government is lying, but unless independent data analysts and scientists can access the data, no one can say whether this is just another piece of fake news or a manipulation of cherry-picked statistics,” says Lavakare. Sunita Narain, director general of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, says the coming weeks will see pollution getting worse. “There are 14 ‘hotspots’ – areas where pollution levels exceed the average because of the burning of municipal solid waste and industrial waste. To reduce the remaining 65 per cent of pollution, these sources need to be tackled,” she says. Lavakare wants action on a “war footing”. The city needs an empowered and accountable authority whose sole goal is to reduce pollution. She is convinced that neither New Delhi nor the country – last year, 11 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities were in India – can afford incremental progress. Anger inflects her voice, mostly when she talks of how little has been done. “Take 2018 – there was not a single ‘clean air’ day in the city. Take the government’s Clean India (Swachh Bharat) campaign. “How you can have a Clean India without clean air?” Or the government’s other pet scheme, Make in India. “How can you Make in India if you can’t breathe in India?” Lavakare asks. The figures are not just dispiriting, they are apocalyptic. A report by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago in 2016 said air pollution was reducing the life expectancy of the average New Delhi resident by about 10 years. She and Ajay discuss whether they should become “pollution refugees” by leaving the city for Goa, a coastal state in India’s southeast. Friends have already sold up and fled. Many have had nasty health scares. Some have opted for crazy commutes, such as between Delhi and Toronto or Delhi and London. “Sometimes, I wish we hadn’t given up our green card,” she says.

New Delhi’s toxic air and how one expat family was affected – sick children, asthma, a death, and a campaign to awaken city to pollution threat

<ul><li>Nearly 674 million citizens in the country are likely to breathe air with high concentration of PM 2.5 in 2030. </li><li>Only half the estimated population in 2030 will be living in areas with clean air. </li><li>The current policies and regulation of the state government ignores emission sources outside their jurisdiction. </li></ul>While India is stepping up its efforts to curb the problem of increasing air pollution, it may be ignoring domestic sources of emissions — including solid fuel usage in households and waste management practices. Poor waste management, agricultural practices like stubble burning and use of fossil fuels for transportation, heating and electricity are bigger sources of air <keyword id="2659838" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Pollution-in-India">pollution in India</keyword>. These have contributed more to the worsening air quality than vehicular emissions, particularly along the gangetic plain in North India, according to a report by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria and the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water (CEEW). Indoor pollution caused by cooking, heating or lighting with kerosene and solid fuels<a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/environment/pollution/air-pollution-claims-7-million-lives-each-year-un-expert/articleshow/68266636.cms"> is proven to be hazardous f</a>or women and children living in developing countries since they spend most of their time at home. Despite knowing the consequences, the Indian authorities<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/indian-govt-on-backfoot-as-stubble-burning-worsens-air-pollution-in-the-national-capital/articleshow/66235837.cms"> have had a hard time in dealing </a>with the practise of stubble burning. Studies have suggested that stubble burning — a practise to get rid of leftover crop before harvest — contributes to half the pollution and toxic air problem in India’s capital. This comes in the back of<a href="https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/www.businessinsider.in/gurgaon-is-the-most-polluted-city-in-the-world/amp_articleshow/68267574.cms"> a recent study </a>that said seven of the 10 most polluted cities in the world are from India, with Gurugram ranking as the worst in the world with the highest levels of pollutants. The biggest source of pollution in Gurugram is stubble burning, which invariably contaminates the air in neighbouring New Delhi every winter. Short sighted The study clearly suggests that the current policies and regulation of the state government ignores emission sources outside their jurisdiction. For instance, crop burning in Punjab is one of the primary sources of pollution in New Delhi and nearby regions. The study also found that, the population living in Indo-Gangetic plain has the highest exposure to PM 2.5 concentration mainly because the emission sources are dense in numbers and the Himalayas are acting as a barrier in ventilation process. 13 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities in terms of PM 2.5 <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/pollution-on-gangetic-plain-affects-600-mn-what-india-can-learn-from-china-119030900140_1.html">belong of Indo-Gangetic plain</a>. It is affecting over 600 million people with cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Indians will continue to deal with the struggle of alarming increase in air pollution as 674 million citizens in the country are likely to breathe air with high concentration of PM 2.5 in 2030 even if all the existing government policies and regulations are followed, <a href="http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/about/news/190329-poor-air-india.html">said the study</a>. Only half the estimated population in 2030 will be living in areas with clean air. Any inefficiency in the policy will lead to significant increase in the number. In 2015 alone more than half the then Indian population — approx 650 million people — were breathing air with high concentration of PM 2.5 that breached the standards provided by NAAQS. Moreover, only 1% had access to air quality approved by World Health Organisation.

India's plan for cleaner air ignores an important source of pollution

<ul><li>India’s national capital, New Delhi, is facing severe air pollution issues with the air quality slipping from ‘very poor’ to ‘severe’. </li><li>As a part of an emergency action plan, the Environment Pollution Control Authority is mulling over stopping all private vehicles from entering New Delhi. </li><li>The Air Quality Index (<keyword id="2578389" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="AQI">AQI</keyword>) in Delhi has already touched ‘severe’, and with Diwali round the corner, it’s assumed that things are just going to get worse. </li><li>The government is hoping that the capital’s transportation system will make up for the resident’s vehicular needs.</li></ul>Adding more fuel to the India’s national capital’s already worsening air pollution issue, New Delhi air quality went from ‘very poor’ to ‘severe’. Following the sudden drop in the Air Quality Index (AQI) on Tuesday, the Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) has been mulling over <a href="https://www.livemint.com/Politics/8LDhHaESZ2NoVQtFYmSLGJ/Cars-may-go-off-Delhi-roads-from-1-November-if-air-quality-w.html">banning all private vehicles</a> from entering the capital. This week the AQI dropped to ‘severe’, which is basically the worst rating that you can get on the index. Categorically an AQI reading that ranges between 0 to 50 is considered to be ‘good’, anything between 51 to 100 is ‘satisfactory’, while between 101 to 200 is tagged as ‘moderate’. Things start to get bad once the AQI crosses 200 where anything between 201 and 300 is ‘poor’, between 301 and 400 is ‘very poor’ and readings beyond 500 are ‘severe’ Meanwhile out of 32 stations set up in New Delhi by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), <a href="https://app.cpcbccr.com/AQI_India/">18 stations</a> recorded an AQI over 400, slotting the current situation in the ‘severe’ category. Restricting private vehicles is a part of the Indian government’s Graded Action Response Plan. It is being considered an immediate and necessary action, albeit a temporary one. May percieve it as an upgrade to the ‘Even-Odd’ scheme the government had been implementing for the past two years where either even or odd numbered cars could be on the road on alternate days. The government is considering this plan with the hope that the already overcrowded public transport system will pull through for Delhi’s transportation requirements. However, it remains to be seen if the capital, with its inefficient transportation system, can actually survive this. As of now, Delhi has only 5,429 buses, which is less than half of the actual demand of 11,000. Out of the total 464 routes covered by public buses, half of them have merely one to five buses running frequently, as has been reported by <a href="https://www.news18.com/news/india/may-have-to-stop-private-vehicles-in-delhi-if-air-quality-worsens-says-pollution-control-body-1924487.html">News 18</a> According to the guidelines of the World Health Organisation (WHO), PM 2.5 should not exceed a safe of 300 micrograms per cubic metre as it is toxic and can affect the health of individuals. New Delhi had already witnessed a <a href="https://www.livemint.com/Politics/5yRUb4IkJqUpBgVlWOzTtI/Why-does-deadly-smog-envelop-Delhi-in-winter.html">breach</a> by recording PM 2.5 over 1000 microgram per cubic metres. Delhi’s pollution problems have a considerable lot to do with vehicular and industrial emissions, but matters are aggravated by agricultural stubble being burned in the neighbouring states of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. And all of this, just before the festive season of Diwali, which spikes up the pollution levels thanks to firecrackers, along with dropping temperatures, makes things worse for the city. Thus, while little can be, and has been, done about the stubble burning and the firecrackers, banning <keyword id="605512" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="private-cars">private cars</keyword> seems to be the only other solution.

Pollution in India’s national capital is so bad that the government is considering banning private cars altogether

<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=World+Health+Organization">World Health Organization</a> has marked <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Delhi+">Delhi </a>as the most polluted globally. In case you’re visiting the city or are a resident, you must be privy to the Capital city’s dangerous <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=air+pollution">air pollution</a>. So bad is the condition that doctors are suggesting chronic patients to leave the city. 
 
At the face of imminent disaster, the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune launched a web app to check the air quality back in February this year. The app, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=SAFAR">SAFAR</a>-Air is currently only available only on <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Android">Android</a>. 
 
Here’s how you can use it to save yourself: 
 
1. The service is available in Pune, Mumbai and Delhi. 
 
2. Choose your nearest locality if yours is not on the list. 
 
3. Here’s what the terms mean: 
 
AQI: Air Quality Index (AQI) is an index for air quality. It tells us how clean or polluted the air really is. 
 
PM: Particulate Matter (PM) is the general term for solids or liquids that pollute the air. The list includes aerosols, smoke, fumes, dust, ash and pollen. 
 
4. The forecast will help you plan your next day better. 
 
5. Share it with your friends and neighbors. Increase overall awareness about Pollution! 
 
Image credit: Indiatimes

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GRAP Stage 4 restrictions take effect as air quality in Delhi deteriorates; PM2.5 levels 130 times higher than WHO limits

BI India Bureau

New Delhi’s toxic air and how one expat family was affected – sick children, asthma, a death, and a campaign to awaken city to pollution threat

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India's plan for cleaner air ignores an important source of pollution

BI India Bureau

Pollution in India’s national capital is so bad that the government is considering banning private cars altogether

BI India Bureau

Delhiites and Visitors, here’s how to use the Air Pollution Checker Safar app

BI India Bureau

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