One in eight deaths due to bad air is far too many
Worsening air pollution must push regions to work towards a healthier future
Air pollution causes one in eight deaths and lowers life expectancy on an average by 1.7 years, according to a pan-India study that should end the policy indecision on the urgency to implement clean air strategies. In 2017, no state had an annual mean particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) lower than the WHO-recommended level of 10µg/m³, with 76.8% of the country’s population exposed to a mean PM2·5 of more than the 40µg/m³ limit set by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards of India. No one in India escaped the health damages.
India’s heterogeneity is reflected in the air polluting patterns, with the damage rates from indoor air pollution varying 145-fold among the states in 2017, and up to six-fold for outdoor particulate matter pollution. The health damage from outdoor PM2.5 was the highest in UP, Haryana, Delhi, Punjab, and Rajasthan, and the household air pollution was highest in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, MP and Assam, according to 2017 data. This variability needs to be addressed while planning policy interventions.
Strengthening healthcare at the population level also mitigates health damage. Delhi had the highest annual mean PM2.5 in 2017, yet its comparatively good public healthcare system led to its population on an average losing 1.6 years of life expectancy; lower than the national average of 1.7 years. Rajasthan lost 2.5 years of life expectancy and Uttar Pradesh lost 2.2 years. Policy interventions show quick results, as is evident from the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which has been expanded to distribute LPG to 80 million homes by March 2019 to lower the use of biomass for cooking, which led to 0.48 million of the 1.24 million premature deaths from air pollution. The National Clean Air Programme, which aims to reduce PM 2.5 and PM10 by 30% and 20% respectively needs robust implementation and realtime course correction, when needed. Air pollution doesn’t recognise state boundaries, and regional priorities must be set aside for cleaner air and a healthier future.
For such flawed creatures, human beings are surprisingly hard to improve, at least through our genes. That’s one reason there’s so much outcry over the recent claim that researchers in China altered the genes of a pair of twins girls — endowing at least one with resistance to HIV. The genetic change, even if it worked as advertised, would not be a clear-cut improvement but a trade-off.
Researchers disabled a gene called CCR5, which in its intact form helps HIV enter cells. Preliminary reports suggest the researchers succeeded in changing only one of the two copies of the gene in the other twin, which is not enough for HIV resistance.
Did the twin with the alteration receive a better version of the gene than she would have otherwise been born with? No, said Hank Greely, director of the Centre for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University. “CCR5 is found in just about all mammals.”It’s probably doing something useful. We don’t know all the risks of disabling it, but in his view, the benefits are “small to nonexistent.” The benefit of the modified gene would vanish along with HIV, but its downsides would remain.
Maybe the perfection misconception stems from the ease with which scientists can improve plants and animals through genetic engineering. How could this kind of “improvement” apply to humans unless someone is thinking of us as a commodity? Only in dystopian stories does anyone use genetic modifica-