America
'660 mn Indians losing three years of life due to air pollution'
Washington, Feb 21
If India can refine its
goals to meet air standards, 660 million people would add about 3.2
years into their lives, a significant research has found, adding that
compliance with Indian air quality standards would save 2.1 billion
life-years.
The team involving several Indian-origin researchers
from the Universities of Chicago, Harvard and Yale have found that
India's high air pollution, ranked by the World Health Organisation
(WHO) as some of the worst in the world, is having an adverse impact on
lifespans.
"India's focus is necessarily on growth. However, for
too long, the conventional definition of growth has ignored the health
consequences of air pollution," said Michael Greenstone, lead study
author and director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of
Chicago (EPIC) in a University press release.
The new figures
came after the WHO estimates showed 13 of the 20 most polluted cities in
the world were in India, including the worst-ranked city - Delhi.
India has the highest rate of death caused by chronic respiratory diseases anywhere in the world.
This study demonstrates that air pollution retards growth by causing people to die prematurely.
"The
loss of more than two billion life years is a substantial price to pay
for air pollution. It is in India's power to change this in
cost-effective ways that allow hundreds of millions of its citizens to
live longer, healthier, and more productive lives," emphasised Rohini
Pande, co-author and director of Evidence for Policy Design at the
Harvard Kennedy School.
"Reforms of the current form of regulation would allow for health improvements that lead to increased growth," she noted.
The
authors, Nicholas Ryan of Yale, Janhavi Nilekani and Anish Sugathan of
Harvard, and Anant Sudarshan, director of EPIC's India office, offer
three policy solutions that would help to cost-effectively decrease
India's pollution.
One initial step would be for India to
increase its monitoring efforts and take advantage of new technology
that allows for real-time monitoring.
"Intermittent sampling of plants taken once or twice a year is not enough to identify violators," the authors wrote.
Further, there is not enough pollution monitoring stations for the public to learn about ambient concentrations.
As
one point of comparison, Beijing has 35 monitoring stations while the
Indian city with the most monitoring stations, Kolkata, has only 20.
Additionally,
the authors say a greater reliance on civil rather than criminal
penalties would instill a "polluter pays" system that would provide
polluters with an incentive to reduce pollution.
"Other studies
have also shown that air pollution reduces productivity at work,
increases the incidence of sick days, and raises health care expenses
that could be devoted to other goods," Greenstone concluded.