Life and breath in the toxic, smog-ridden Indian sprawl they call the ‘gas chamber’
In a noxious smog so thick it blots out skyscrapers, begging children dart between air-conditioned cars jamming up the gridlocked highway. By the main road into Gurugram, the world’s most polluted place, the air is so gritty that these children are getting respiratory diseases normally suffered by elderly smokers.
This is one of the busiest bottlenecks in the Indian capital Delhi, which the city’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called a “gas chamber” last week as he declared a public health emergency.
The pall of toxic diesel fumes hanging over millions of people has been stirred into a deadly cocktail with smoke from burning crops, dust from unfinished construction sites, factory emissions and gas from sprawling landfill.
Delhi has 13 coal-fired power stations within a 200-mile radius of the city.
During what has become an annual twomonth pollution season at this time of year because of local climatic conditions, it’s like a lid has been put on the atmosphere.
I can taste the brown-grey cloud of man-made poison at the back of my throat, and my eyes sting. Over my two-day visit to Delhi this week, the official air quality index level has been well over 600, which is categorised as “hazardous” – 10 times higher than the internationally recommended safe limit. London, by contrast, was less than 20 on the same days.
The weekend before, parts of Delhi was measured at 1,200, the highest reading since records began. Schools were closed, children issued with face masks, planes diverted from landing and factories ordered to stop production.
“This is as close to an apocalypse as you can think about,” Delhi lawyer and pollution campaigner Saurabh Bhasin tells me. “It’s a public health disaster.
“Millions are suffering, and thousands must have died from heart attacks and respiratory conditions accentuated by
Tom stands on congested road the pollution.” Rainfall patterns have been affected by climate change, which leads to pollution lingering for longer.
And, in the last few days, a dip in wind speed and temperature has made the air denser, trapping pollutants and worsening air quality. Schoolboy Sujit Mandal, 15, says: “I have to walk along the highway next to all of this traffic. I have been finding it hard to breathe.”
At Gurugram’s Civil Hospital, many of the people I meet say they have been treated for severe coughs. Prem Rout, 35, and wife Aruna, 27, are there with their two-month-old daughter, Gyanandi.
“The baby has a cough like we all do,” says Prem, a taxi driver exposed to fumes all day. “Her older brother has