Experts begin study on health impacts of air pollution in Delhi
NEW DELHI: A group of public health experts and air pollution researchers has begun a collaboration to discuss the health impacts of air pollution, including premature mortality, and options before individuals to address this.
In a roundtable organised at the University of Mexico’s Health Science Center and Extension of Community Health Outcome (ECHO), India, a medical education and care management collaboration, on Tuesday, health experts said action can be driven when people understand the real health impact of air pollution.
“There is no doubt about the health impacts of air quality. Morbidity and mortality figures can be disputed. But there is a spurt of cases in emergencies on poor air days. Even if we don’t have long term India-specific studies, retrospective data analysis like comparing the disease incidence data on a polluted area with non-polluted area helps establish l ong term health impacts,” said Dr MK Daga, director professor of medicine at Maulana Azad Medical College and member secretary, Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health.
In Lok Sabha last June, union environment minister Prakash Javadekar had said there was no conclusive data to establish a direct correlation of death/disease exclusively to air pollution.
ECHO has asked experts who attended the roundtable that included VK Shukla, head of
CPCB’S air quality management division; Dr Daga; MP George, head of air quality lab at Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), Dr Ravinder Singh from Indian Council for Medical Research; experts from National Centre for Disease Control, Public Health Foundation of India; World Health Organisation among others to join consultations to be organised by ECHO virtually once a week for the next six months to begin with.
Following these consultations, the team will arrive at a health communication strategy which can make a difference to air pollution levels in Delhi. “ECHO’S goal will be to reduce air pollution with the purpose of improving health. We don’t want to focus on what the government has done or can do. This is to see what stakeholders could do themselves,” said Dr Sanjeev Arora, Director,
ECHO Institute.
Shukla said annual PM 2.5 concentration in 2019 was 109 micrograms per cubic metres, more than double the annual national safe standard of 40 micrograms per cubic metres. “PM 10 levels met the standard on 121 days in 2019 and air quality was in good, moderate or satisfactory on 182 days. Still on 50% of days air pollution is very high in Delhi which needs to be addressed,” he said.
KK Agarwal, President Heart Care Foundation of India said as former Indian Medical Association President he had found that there was no consensus among health specialists to communicate that air pollution is harmful. This was mainly because if heart or respiratory diseases are linked to air pollution then it would be termed a natural disaster and health insurance will not cover them.