Indians Seek a Respite From Dangerous Pollution
NEW DELHI — As air pollution shot up to dangerous levels across India this month, underscoring a dire public health crisis, a crowd descended on a small shop in New Delhi for a solution: a 15-minute hit of clean oxygen.
At Oxy Pure, a self-styled “oxygen bar,” customers strapped tubes to their noses and inhaled scents of lavender, lemongrass or spearmint. In the absence of other options, Lisa Dwivedi, a Ukrainian living in the city, said she came to the bar because she was fed up with having itchy eyes, a runny nose and a swollen throat.
“I don’t know if it’s psychological, but it makes me feel good to know I am inhaling pure oxygen, if only for 15 minutes,” she said.
The air pollution crisis in India has become so severe that officials in the capital declared a public health emergency earlier this month, when levels of deadly particulate matter rose a few dozen times above what the World Health Organization considers safe.
But despite air so scary it may be causing brain damage in children, some central government officials have either resisted acknowledging the problem, which has persisted in India for years, or minimized its severity.
During an especially poisonous day when levels of PM 2.5, tiny, cancer-linked particulate matter, rose to some 60 times the safe limit in parts of the capital, Harsh Vardhan, India’s health minister, recommended eating carrots to fight any harmful effects.
“People are dying and it cannot happen in a civilized country,” a bench of Supreme Court judges said this month about the pollution. “We will not tolerate this. We are making a mockery of everything.”
With no imminent solutions, some Indians have tried to step in — with solutions like the oxygen bar.
For Indians worried about the air, options have largely been restricted to buying purifiers, sealing cracks in their homes with
As air deteriorates, oxygen bars offer a cleaner solution.
blankets and towels, or leaving toxic cities entirely. India’s poorest residents have no choice but to sleep outside in the fog.
At Oxy Pure, customers pay $4 to $6 for 15 minutes of oxygen carried through a nasal cannula.
The owner, Aryavir Kumar, who originally worked as a hotelier, said he did not make a profit from the business, which opened in May.
But he plans to open locations in the capital’s airport, and in the cities of Mumbai and Bangalore.
“Customers say, ‘Now we have to buy fresh air?’” he said. “I tell them, ‘Do you not also pay for a bottle of clean drinking water, something you did not do 20 years ago?’ ”
On a recent morning, Vikram Aiyer, 25, stopped in to the small store before going to work as a salesman.
His nostrils were fitted with tubes attached to a beaker containing a green liquid. Mr. Aiyer took a deep breath.
“The thought of unadulterated oxygen pumps up my flagging morale in this city,” he said, closing his eyes and exhaling.