New Delhi under a cloud of smog

■

Children, the elderly and those with respiratory ailments like asthma suffer the most from Delhi’s hazardous smog, which does not lift until around late February. Exposure to toxic air kills hundreds of thousands of children every year, the WHO said in an October report. Children breathe more rapidly than adults, taking twice as much polluted air into their tiny bodies.

It has devastating effects on children in Delhi, say doctors who see it first hand.

“A child who is born in Delhi is taking in gulps of bad air which is equivalent to smoking 20 to 25 cigarettes on the first day of his life,” said Arvind Kumar, a prominent Delhi lung surgeon.

For years the surgeon has tirelessly campaigned to raise awareness about the dangers of air pollution, which the WHO last month likened to the tobacco epidemic. Air quality in India’s haze-hit north, including the capital, New Delhi, deteriorated sharply yesterday because of unfavourable weather and an increase in smoke from stubble burning in fields across the region.

Levels of PM 2.5, tiny particulate matter that can reach deep into the lungs and cause major health problems, were above 400 in most parts of the capital, and in some places soared above 600.

That is nearly 24 times a recommended level of 25 micrograms per cubic metre on average over a 24-hour period, set by the World Health Organisation, which this year said India was home to the world’s 14 most polluted cities. New Delhi was ranked the sixth most polluted.