Image: The Journal
Faizel Patel – 27/11/2020
Author of the book “The Great Smog of India” Siddharth Singh says the COVID-19 lockdown has both exacerbated and relieved the smog situation in India.
Singh was speaking to Radio Islam on Friday about his new book which details the air pollution in India.
The catastrophic levels of air pollution and Singh’s opening chapter makes it clear how dangerous the smog actually is
Speaking to Radio Islam, Singh says when the lockdown began and with all economic activity stopping, including road transport, industries and construction, the country saw the clearest air in years.
“Than what happened, was that because of the lockdown, many of the things that we were going to improve upon, in the field of agriculture, or in terms of more purchases of electric vehicles, all of those things could not happen. Now in the winter period, suddenly the air pollution levels are much higher than they normally are.”
New Delhi, with the worst air quality worldwide, suffered its most toxic day in a year on Thursday, recording the concentration of poisonous PM2.5 particles at 14 times the World Health Organization’s safe limit.
Singh says this is shocking and very dangerous.
“These particles are so small that they are about one twentieth the weight of a human hair. Therefore being so small, they go straight into your nose and lungs, they bypass all your natural defences. There’s nothing you can do to stop it from getting straight into your blood stream and once it’s in your blood stream it can go into any organ including the brain causing a lot of health issues.”
Singh says in India, 20% of all lung related diseases and 19% or 20% of all diabetes is caused by air pollution resulting in 1.7 million Indians dying every year making smog the biggest killers.
Listen to the interview with Sidarth Singh
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