Experts say ‘absolute waste’ as Delhi opens its first smog tower

NEW DELHI opened its first “smog tower” (pictured) on Monday (23) aimed at reducing the air pollution blamed for thousands of premature deaths every year, but experts were sceptical.

Concentrations of deadly particles in Delhi’s air regularly exceed safe limits by up to 20 times, particularly in winter when its 20 million people are enveloped in a grey blanket of smog. Forty giant fans on the 25-metre tower will pump 1,000 cubic metres of air per second through filters that halve the amount of harmful particulates in a radius of one square kilometre, say engineers.

“Today is a big day for Delhi in its fight for clean air against pollution,” chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said after the inauguration near the busy shopping area of Connaught Place.

The tower cost $2 million (£1.7m) and critics say erecting a sufficient number to clean the air substantially across the city would cost huge amounts of public money, and that efforts would be better directed at the sources of the smog. “Let’s just be clear that this is futile, an absolute waste,” Karthik Ganesan from the Council on Energy, Environment and Water said.

“Now that taxpayers’ money has been spent, let Delhi be the test case for all other Indian cities... to ensure no other city spends on such ideas which we can’t afford,” he added.

India has 14 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities, according to the World Health Organization.