Air Pollution in Big Cities Essay

The essay presents the environmental injustice of the man-made air pollution in one of the world's most air polluted city in the Delhi. The scale of injustice in the populous South-Asian cities are massively different than some of the know environmental injustice, the Flint Water crisis, the disaster of 100,000 people in the city of Flint. In contrary, 600,000 people die annually in Delhi due to air pollution related health hazard. Air pollution kills more people annually in the world than the combined death from HIV, malaria and influenza, the major fraction of deaths are in the cities

The essay had presented how and why the environmental injustice has occurred.

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So, Delhi air pollution level is like every citizen smoking two packs of cigarette daily (Vijay paper) – what an injustice, we are restricing smoking in all public building, but no real effort to stop breathing breathing polluted air, 10-times higher pollued than the standard of WHO.

WHO estimates about 600,000 annual death in India from air pollution and reports that in the rush hour, the air in the capital city Delhi is most polluted in the world. In an urgent and emergency act, the government of Delhi has laid the policy of restricting private vehicle movement – odd and even numbered license plate car to run in the city on the alternate days.

The worst hit from this air pollution is the poorer section of the population. There are estimates, they spend on average 7 hour a day outside, while the oligarchy and the affluent section of the population responsible for this pollution, spend almost no hour outside. They live in air conditioned property and travel in air codition cars and thus come rarely in contact with the pollution in roads. Concentration of hazardous particles at rod surface levels have been found eight time higher than at higher elevations, e.g., on the roof tops. Thus, slum dwellers, traffic polices, auto-rickshaw pullers, school chidren are the worst victim of this pollution.

-Delhi has worst air quality among 1600 cities in the world (WHO, 2014). In December 2017, during the cricket Test match between Sri Lanka and India, some players from both side vomited from harmful pollutants in the air, 12 times higher than the safe limit of WHO (Gardian). Main reasons of air pollution are dusty air from the Gulf (40%), dust from all kind of construction and road dust (38%), and from road vehicles (10%). . During last several years, the PM2.5 was 10-times higher than the limit of WHO. Air quality index (AOI), in the scale between 1 and 500, for Delhi was recorded 486 recorded on 9 November 2017 (Mishra, 2019). Cardiovascular, neurological, sever breathing trouble who has underlying Asthma. Delhi government ordered closures of all public and private schools during December, 2017. In general measures taken to control pollution are emergency and short-term measures, like school cloures, reduction of rail and metr fare encouraging people to travel by train, and control of by odd and even number plate cars on odd and even dates. World's 99% biomass fuel is used for domestic purposes in developing countries, which is also a main source of air pollution.

Delhi air pollution is fully anthropogenic all human induced causes from emissions from road traffic vehicle, agriculture stubble burning and biomass fuel. When India called nationwide lock down in March-April 2020, during the month, the fine particulate matter PM2.5 dropped between 40 to 70%, mainly for the vehicle was off the road.

The pollution of Delhi is most toxic; 70% is caused by emission from road vehicles. And people at outdoor are most affected two in every five residents in Delhi surfer from breathing and respiratory illness, and can lead to lung cancer . Four in every five household suffer.

India's economy is growing fast, about 7% GDP growth rate, mainly due to relaxation in regulations attracting foreign investment. Business in Europe and America are outsourcing their business to India in their megacities including Delhi; 66% of world’s total call centre is located in India. This has created a new middle class with changes in life style and has let to more vehicle in the road Consumption by this new middle class is 39%, and is predicted to increase to 70% by 2025. A car is as cheap as USD 3000, and car into the road can increase by 65%.

In 2001, the government passed the regulation of converting all public owned transport from diesel to compressed natural gas, which resulted in 60% improvement of air quality in Delhi by 2005 relative to the condition in 1994. Diesel vehicle is the worst source of pollution emitting smokes, articles and nitrous oxide. In contrary, from 1997 to 2006, the number of registered vehicle in Delhi has increased from 1.5 to 4.5 million. Everyday in Delhi, 963 private cars enter into the road of Delhi. And, so, the air quality is again going backwards to the similar condition back in 1990s. So, it remains with the government to incentivise the private vehicle owner to switch from diesel to petrol, whose pollution is 15th less than diesel. Converting to petrol, although, still not perfection as it will keep on emitting greenhouse gas.

In world's largest democracy, the election season drives the new regulations and also their implementation. In 1990, government's plan to relocate heavy industrial plant causing hishest pollution did not materialise. In 1997, government wanted to remove all cars more than 15 years old from the street. None of this materialised due to election season. Implemeting a new regulation is a much bigger challenge than passing a new regulation in the parliament mainly due to large scale corruption in policing (who will implement rules) and in government agencies. The government though has toughened up the vehicle certification, but again much more difficult to implement due to corruption in the implementing aganecies.

While this is great news for economy and has contributed in GD,P but coming at the cost of environmental degradation and poorer section of the people has been the victim the case for the air pollution, not only in Delhi, in other Indian cities too.

Patrticulate material in the air, of the size 2.5 micrometres, is not safe in any amount according to WHO. And Delhi has it 10 to 15 times higher than the limit and can reach to human lungs. As of 2016, Delhi has the highest PM2.5 materails in the air among 1600 cities in the world surveyed by WHO, and the concentration level found was 122 µgm-3, 12 times higher than WHO’s standard of 10 µgm-3 (Subramania, 2016; WHO, 2016 ). Cold weather in the winter season traps PM2.5 particuate close the ground at rod level and PM2.5 concentration was recorded to 600 µgm-3, 60 times higher than the standard of WHO. The Delhi court declared the capital as a gas chanmber. The polluted air causes 16,000 death and 6 million asthma attack annually (Guttikunda et al. 2014) and reduces life expectancy by 6 years in the city dwellers (Ghude et al. 2016).

Delhi's air pollution varies between season, and varies over the day with temperature. It also varies between areas (called districts) within the city.

Delhi Metro opened its first lane in 2002 and initiated to improve public transportation. Except two, all power plants in Delhi were converted from coal powered to natural gas around the same year. The brick kilns were relocated away from Delhi's geographic boundary.

However, population of Delhi has doubled since 2000, and number of vehicles has increased from 3 million to 9 million.

Delhi's pollution is caused by various reasons some are continuous ad some causes are only seasonal (Sharma and Dikshit, 2016)). Continues round the year pollution is caused by road vehicles, dust from public and private construction and from roads, and burning of biomass domestic and commercial purposes. Seasonal pollution is caused by dust coming via wind from the Gulf and desserts during drier months, burning of agricultural stubble and fireworks during Diwali festival in November.

Even trial of even and odd number licensed cars running on alternate day for two weeks in January 2016 did not do much; the concentration level of PM2.5 remain far too high, 184 µgm-3. This odd and even policy got attracted support from the public, but it was too little given the scale of the problem, 10 to 20 times higher P2.5 level than WHO's standard.

Vehicles contribute 25% of the total PM2.5 particulate, and half of this is contributed by the heavy trucks carrying goods and thousands of them run through the city everyday (Goel and Pant, 2016).

Research by IIT Kanpur suggests (Sharma and Dikshit, 2016) suggests that one-third of Delhi’s pollution travel from outside the city. On the other hand, the half of the top 20 polluted cities, listed by WHO are in this region. Therefore, to improve the air pollution in Delhi, the the cities and towns in the region of Delhi will also need improvement.

Delhi has 25 million people (Bhatnagar, 2016), approximately 5 times bigger population than Denmark.In November 2016, the pollution level went 15 times higher than the limit by WHO. Delhi government ordered school closure, shutdown of all construction sites, sprayed water in the streets, banned all diesel run generator except in hospitals. In November and December 2017, the Supreme Court banned selling of all fireworks for Diwali festival. The ban remains only in paper. The air-pollution again back to 25 times higher than allowed limit (). Both Sri Lankan and Indian cricket players playing in Delhi vomited in the field and were escorted off the field. IN present tie, the Delhi air is twice polluted than it was in 1990s ( WHO identifies airpollution as the major cause of cancer and lung disease and reports 3 million annual death (2016), and most of them are in developing countries.,

So, it is a collective failure, by the governments and its institutes who were give responsibility: the central and the state government and their policy makers, the court (although they continuously tried), the medical practitioners, the police and the industries who continually polluting. Despite the staggering number of annual death including children, has anyone been charged no!! Has anyone been compensated No.Main causes: Vehicular and industrial emissions, dust from construction, emission from brick kilns, biomass burning, diesel driver generators are the main polluting agents. Inadequate infrastructures and massive unrbnisation and deforestation has simply multiplied the problem. Public behaviour are also responsible, like fireworks, private cars, open construiction, uncotrooled domestic waste disposal and many other reasons. Delhi was never ahead of this problem during the last three decades despite repated control and improvement measures, but all were either emergency or very short-term measures.

Personal-level causes were divided into eight categories: Using diesel generators, burningbiomass or waste, emissions from personal vehicles, increased number of individual automobiles, roaddust due to traffic, emissions from cooking stoves, burning firecrackers, and infrastructure projects (seeTable 1 for details).Societal-level causes for Delhi air pollution were also divided into eight categories: emissionsfrom power or thermal plants, pollution from a neighboring state or country, industrial emissions,exhaust from commercial vehicles, resuspension of traffic dust, establishment of new industry, weatherconditions, and public transportTable 5 for societal level responsibilityWrong aapproach actually. The news papers blame private cars and auto-richksahws, but then advise the legislator and court to control , rather than setting standard practice by the individual. So, the bottom ocietal line is, they frame idividaul behaviour, but then propose societal solution, which simpley do not work. There s a societal link to this. Cars are onwed by higer and middle class and they contribute to GDP, while the lower class and the poorer section do not wn any car and the worst victim. Thus, solution mostly come as a societal solution than individual behaviour changes.Transport sector's contribution to GDP is expected to rise from 5.6 to 6.4% by 2050 in this fast growing economy.