West should focus on itself over pollution before pointing towards India, says Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar

The latest report by WHO, which said that India homes four of the world’s five most polluted cities, has irked the Indian environment minister Prakash Javadekar, who has termed it "misleading." To clear matters, he said that India would soon come out with its own report on the air pollution data of major cities across the US and Europe, to show people the whole picture.

Meanwhile, he clarified that the report would not be to counter the WHO claims but to create awareness.

The report had listed 30 Indian cities among the 100 most polluted cities in the world, but Javadekar said that the report makers did not factor in various key pollutants, viz. sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and benzene while analysing the quality of air in the surveyed cities, while also wondering why western countries focused more on the pollution in India and some other nations, rather than their own selves.

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He added that the WHO report, based on 2012-13 data, was prepared taking into consideration PM (particulate matter) 10 and PM 2.5, but it was misleading on their part to categorise cities as polluted based on only PM 2.5 was misleading.

"There is ozone pollution, benzene pollution, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide pollution among eight major pollutants. All have adverse impact on health. On each parameter, each pollutant, there are different cities in the world which are bad and good," he had said in an interview earlier this week.

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