By AFP - Agence France Presse
India's capital closes schools as “death trap” air pollution suffocates the city.
Bhuvan BAGGA
India's capital, New Delhi, moved schools to online classes on Monday until further notice as worsening toxic pollution exceeded 60 times the maximum daily limit recommended by the World Health Organization.
Several piecemeal government initiatives have failed to address the problem in any measurable way, with air pollution responsible for thousands of premature deaths every year and particularly affecting the health of children and the elderly.
The pollution has spread across a swathe of northern India - with tourists at the Taj Mahal in Agra taking pictures of the almost invisible white marble monument - and has suffocated the residents of Lahore in neighboring Pakistan.
“My eyes have been burning for the last few days,” said rickshaw puller Subodh Kumar, 30.
“Pollution or not, I have to be on the road, where else am I going to go?” he said, taking a break to eat at a roadside stall.
“We don't have the option of staying indoors... our livelihood, food, and life - everything is out in the open.”
Every year, the city is covered in poisonous smoke, attributed mainly to the burning of stubble by farmers in neighboring regions to clear their fields for plowing, as well as to factories and traffic fumes.
A report in The New York Times this month, based on samples taken over five years, revealed that dangerous fumes are also expelled by a power plant that incinerates garbage from the landfill mountains.
- 'Dangerous' - PM2.5 pollutant levels
Levels of PM2.5 pollutants - dangerous cancer-causing microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs - peaked at 921 micrograms per cubic meter at midday on Monday, according to pollution monitors IQAir, with a reading above 15 in 24 hours considered unhealthy by the WHO.
Individual monitoring stations registered even higher levels - one government-run monitor recorded PM2.5 pollutants at 1,117 micrograms, 74 times the maximum set by the WHO.
Dense, acrid gray smoke choked New Delhi, with IQAir listing the conditions as “hazardous.”
Elementary schools were ordered to stop face-to-face classes on Thursday, with a series of other restrictions imposed on Monday, including limiting diesel-powered trucks and construction.
The authorities hope that by keeping children at home, traffic will be reduced.
The government has asked children and the elderly, as well as those with lung or heart problems, to “stay at home as much as possible.”
Air filters are too expensive for many people, and most don't have homes that can be effectively protected from the misery of foul-smelling and dangerous air.
“Rich ministers and officials can afford to stay at home, but not ordinary people like us,” said cab driver Rinku Kumar, 45.
“Who can afford an air purifier when paying the monthly bills is a challenge?”
India's Supreme Court has ordered the authorities to take “all possible measures.”
“It is the constitutional obligation of the central and state governments to ensure that citizens live in a pollution-free atmosphere,” the court said.
- 'Suffocating death trap' - You are a long-time resident of Delhi, William Dalton.
William Dalrymple, a longtime resident of Delhi, said he was shocked to “find the city embalmed in a shroud of pollution that envelops everything,” he wrote on social media.
“I have never seen anything like this in 40 years of living here,” the Scottish historian wrote, saying that the ‘most fascinating of cities’ was ‘currently a tragic and suffocating death trap.’
Critics say that arguments between rival politicians who lead neighboring states, as well as between central and state authorities, have exacerbated the problem.
Politicians are accused of not wanting to anger key figures in their constituencies, especially powerful farming groups.
But Delhi chief minister Atishi, who uses one name, blamed neighboring states for not stopping farmers from burning the stubble.
“The people of Delhi are really upset, they can't breathe,” she told reporters on Monday.
“I kept getting phone calls all night from people who had to admit their elderly parents to hospitals for breathing problems or from parents looking for steroid inhalers for their children,” she added.
“Why? Because stubble is being burnt all over the country, in every state, everywhere, and the national government is doing nothing. Today, the whole of northern India has been pushed into a medical emergency.”
Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, which is home to more than 30 million people, consistently top the world's winter air pollution rankings.
bb-pjm/ecl
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