‘Clean air can add 4 yrs to life’

STUDY India’s life expectancy could go up if its own and more stringent WHO standards on air quality are met

NEW DELHI: It is well documented how poor air quality impacts health, but for the first time the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute (EPI) has developed an index to measure by how much. If India meets its own air quality standard for air pollutant PM 2.5 (40 µg/m³) every Indian would live an average one year more. If it meets the more stringent WHO standards for PM 2.5 (10 µg/m³) Indians would live on average 4 years longer.

National Capital Region residents are losing out on almost 6 years of life because of the dangerous air pollution levels. If WHO standards are met in NCR, people would live 9 years longer. In Kolkata and Mumbai, better air quality would translate into almost 3.5 year longer life spans.

“The AQLI is the first tool of its kind to allow people to learn how much longer they could live in the areas where they live if air pollution is reduced to meet global or national standards,” Michael Greenstone, the director at EPI and one of the authors of the study, said. “It suggests that particulates are the greatest current environmental risk to human health, with the impact on life expectancy in many parts of the world similar to the effects of every man, woman and child smoking cigarettes for several decades.”

India’s previous environment minister stirred controversy by suggesting that the link between air pollution and its impact on health remains to be established, and data about air pollution deaths is particularly problematic. A government effort to study the health impacts of air pollution has not taken off.

However, scientists have argued pollution causes respiratory disorders and cardiovascular morbidity. Elderly and children are particularly susceptible.

The estimated average PM 2.5 concentration for populationweighted exposure increased from 59 in 1990 to 73 µg/m3 in 2015. The Global Burden of Disease 2015 estimated that PM 2.5 contribute to 4.2 million deaths globally, a majority of which occur in India and China.

The new report presents a different but no less distressing aspect of the problem.