With 620,000 deaths per year, India has the highest death rate from respiratory diseases in the world. The main fault is air pollution caused by traffic.
They are called “airpocalypses”, these episodes where the pollution level of a city is 27 times higher than the ceiling recommended by the World Health Organization for a 24-hour exposure. And very often, it is China, with its capital Beijing, which is struck by this phenomenon, which is far from harmless for health. But today, another country worries even more than the Middle Empire. India has just recently won the sad record for the number of deaths linked to respiratory diseases. A terrible observation for this country made by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, and relayed this Wednesday by Le Monde.
New Delhi’s air more harmful than Beijing’s
With 620,000 deaths per year, India has the highest death rate from respiratory diseases in the world. And even if several Indian cities are affected (Calcutta, Bombay and Bangalore), it is in New Delhi, the capital, that the situation is most worrying. The air of the city of nearly 250,000 inhabitants would now be more harmful than that of Beijing, with concentrations of fine particles which explode.
This risk is all the more important since these fine particles are particularly harmful to the body, because they progress to the end of the respiratory tract, and reach the alveoli and then lead to pulmonary diseases. “We are witnessing an upsurge in patients suffering from cardiovascular or respiratory disorders”, worries in Le Monde J. N. Pande, a pulmonologist based in New Delhi.
Low temperatures increase the risk
In addition, in an article in New York Times published on January 25, other world environmental experts are alarmed by the poor air quality of Delhi which would be particularly dangerous during the winter. “At this season, there is no wind to drive away the fine particles which concentrate under the effect of low temperatures”, told the American magazine Anumita Roychowdhury, the executive director of the Center for Science and the Environment. (CSE).
For example, since the beginning of the year and winter, the concentrations of fine particles (PM2.5), particularly harmful, would be up to 25 times higher than the limit recommended by the WHO.
And faced with this observation, another dramatic observation is posed by scientists. This atmospheric pollution first hits the poorest, for whom care is too expensive. Their immune system is also often more deficient than the rest of the population due to malnutrition.
Finally, for the most disadvantaged, there is also the significant indoor air pollution in India. Burning wood, which is widely used for cooking, increases the risk of mortality from respiratory diseases, for example.
One-third of Delhi’s children suffer from respiratory problems
In addition, according to a study conducted in 2011 by the National Chittaranjan Institute for Cancer Research, a third of children in Delhi suffer from respiratory problems, impaired concentration and vitamin D deficiency due to air pollution, classified in 2013 by the WHO as “proven carcinogenic to humans”. These children who are more vulnerable to pollution are also victims of this scourge in China, where an 8-year-old Chinese girl developed lung cancer. She is the youngest patient in the country affected by this disease.
As a reminder, with nearly 1,400 vehicles sold every day, in addition to the 4 million already in circulation in New Delhi, traffic is the source of 72% of air pollution in the capital, according to the Indian ministry of environment and forests. However, despite a constant increase in pollution over the past ten years, no measure aimed at reducing road traffic, even in the event of a pollution peak, does not seem to be envisaged by the Indian authorities.
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