India fought more ambitious curbs on dirty energy at this month's COP26 climate summit, a move driven by its need for cheap fuel to power its booming economy. Smog is blamed for more than a million deaths in India annually, and a recent University of Chicago study found that air pollution was likely to reduce life expectancy by more than nine years for four in every 10 Indians.Īuthorities have struggled to address the root causes, with national coal consumption nearly doubling in the last decade. Lal's business suffers and he sometimes drives around the streets for an entire day without finding passengers, who prefer paying extra to sit through their commutes inside a cab.īhajan Lal must now undergo pulmonary function tests at a private hospital in New Delhi.Ĭity officials also shut schools indefinitely, barred trucks except those carrying essential goods from entering the capital until next week, and told civil servants to work from home.īut they stopped short of accepting a call by India's Supreme Court to declare the city's first "pollution lockdown", which would have restricted the population to their homes.
"I feel so sorry looking at children and their health," said Lal. Levels of PM2.5 pollutants-the microparticles most harmful to human health, which can enter the bloodstream through the lungs-last week reached more than 30 times the maximum daily limit recommended by the World Health Organization.
Mucus builds up and collects in my chest."ĭelhi is consistently ranked the world's worst capital for air quality and on its most polluted days the smog can cut visibility on the roads to barely 50 metres. My lungs are affected, which creates breathing problems. "The pollution causes a lot of problems for my throat," the 58-year-old told AFP, after a morning spent in the driver's seat of his motorised three-wheeler. For the last three decades, Lal carted passengers along bumpy thoroughfares to temples, markets and offices in New Delhi, working every day through the winter months when a pall of toxic smog settles over the sprawling megacity.
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