India breathes easy in lockdown: 90 cities record dip in air pollution

With a nationwide lockdown in place, over 90 cities, including Delhi, recorded minimal air pollution in the last few days.

Welcoming the reduction in pollution, environmentalists urged the government to treat it as a "wake-up call" and stop its "obsession" with "development" at the cost of the environment.

India is currently under the biggest lockdown with around 130 crore people asked to stay home in view of the coronavirus outbreak, which has claimed 19 lives and infected over 900 people in the country.

The government has urged people to avoid unnecessary travelling, significantly reducing the traffic movement across the country.

According to the Centre-run System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), the impact of the measures taken due to the coronavirus outbreak has resulted in a drop in PM2.5 (fine particulate pollutant) by 30 per cent in Delhi and by 15 per cent in Ahmedabad and Pune.

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The level of Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) pollution, which can increase the risk of respiratory conditions, has also reduced. NOx pollution is mainly caused due to a high motor vehicle traffic. In Pune, NOx pollution has reduced by 43 per cent, in Mumbai, by 38 per cent and in Ahmedabad, by 50 per cent.

Gufran Beig, a scientist at SAFAR, said generally in March, pollution is in the "moderate" category (Air Quality Index range: 100-200) while presently, it is in the "satisfactory" (AQI 50-100) or "good" (AQI 0-50) category.

"It is the lockdown impact. Local factors like shutting down of industries and construction and traffic have contributed in improving the air quality. Rain is also helping, but the curbs on local emissions are playing a significant role," he said.

Under the "good" category, pollution is considered to be at the lowest and the air is believed to be the healthiest to breathe.

According to the data of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the air quality in the national capital is presently in the "good" category. In Kanpur, which has high pollution levels, it is in the "satisfactory" category. Moreover,92 other cities with CPCB monitoring centres have recorded minimal air pollution, with the air quality in the range of "good" to "satisfactory".

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As many as 39 cities have recorded "good" air quality and 51 cities have recorded "satisfactory" air quality in the last few days, the CPCB data showed.

An AQI between 0-50 is considered good, 51-100 satisfactory, 101-200 moderate, 201-300 poor, 301-400 very poor and 401-500 severe.

Environmentalists believe that the reduced pollution levels should act as a wake-up call for the government.

Jyoti Pande Lavakare, co-founder, Care for Air NGO, said the low AQI and the blue skies proved beyond doubt that a lot of the polluted air was "anthropomorphic, that is, man-made".

"Obviously, slowing down the economy to such a degree is not the ideal way to bring down air pollution, but at least it proves that it can be done. We can achieve the same outcome by doing this mindfully, using technology and low-emission alternatives," she said.

Lavakare emphasised on the need to realise that air pollution weakens the lungs, so countries like India with higher pollution and lower nutrition levels will be more affected by COVID-19, and morbidity and deaths are likely to be higher.

Ravina Kohli, environmentalist and part of the #MyRightToBreathe campaign, said it was a "huge wake-up call" for governments obsessed with development at the cost of the environment.

"We the people are the problem. Our communication on solutions now also includes how to reduce pollution at a personal level by being able to understand our behaviour and its consequences on our environment.

"For the first time, I believe our present generation will discover the critical importance and need for a focus on public health and the quality of air we breathe," she said.

Jai Dhar Gupta, environmentalist and founder of Nirvana Being that sells masks and purifiers to combat pollution, said humans need to figure out if they wish to go back to the normal that was there before or find a more sustainable normal.

"This has been a fantastic wake-up call and I think we had a reality check and we need to figure out a new normal. This is an opportunity, a chance to find a new sustainable life," he said.

Odd-even may not cut Delhi air pollution. An expert from IIT explains why

Delhi declared a health emergency on November 2, 2019, due to severe air pollution.

On November 3, levels of PM 2.5--polluting particles 30 times finer than one human hair, that can enter the bloodstream and sicken or kill people--in Delhi’s air were recorded at a 24-hour average of 625 microgram per cubic metre (µg/m3) of air, the season’s worst. This is 24 times higher than the World Health Organization (WHO)-prescribed safe levels of 25 µg/m3 (24-hour average) and nine times higher than the laxer Indian standard of 60 µg/m3 (24-hour average).

The Delhi government launched the ‘odd-even’ scheme, on November 4, 2019, to reduce vehicular pollution--odd- or even-numbered private cars would be allowed to run on alternate days. Will this scheme reduce pollution? No, says Sagnik Dey, who studied this exercise when it was implemented for the first time in January 2016. (It was implemented again in April 2016). Dey is an associate professor at the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences and coordinator of the Centre of Excellence for Research on Clean Air at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Transportation is the largest source of air pollution in Delhi, contributing 18-39 per cent to the city’s pollution, according to an April 2019 analysis by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), a Delhi-based think-tank. But without including two wheelers, which form the largest chunk of transport emissions, the ‘odd-even’ scheme may not succeed, Dey said.

Road dust is the second largest source of air pollution in Delhi (18-38 per cent), followed by industries (2-29 per cent). Power plants, which are going to miss their second extended deadline for curbing air pollution in December 2019, having missed the first in December 2017--contribute about 3-11 per cent of Delhi’s pollution. The fifth largest source is construction (8 per cent).

Air pollution is not only a winter problem. “Year-round, the level (of air pollution) remains three times higher than the national standard. Unless we bring down the annual concentration significantly, health burden will not reduce,” Dey told IndiaSpend. To fight air pollution, governments need not only emergency measures when pollution spikes, but year-round air pollution reduction drives across sectors.

Edited excerpts from his interview:

Looking at the news reports, it seems like air pollution is only a winter problem. Is that true?

This is why the problem is not resolved. In Delhi, we have two major episodes (of air pollution)--the first from mid-October to mid-November and the second from end-December to mid-January. But year-round, the level (of PM 2.5) remains three times higher than the national standard. Unless we bring down the annual concentration significantly, health burden will not reduce.

During the first five days of November 2019, when the focus was on Delhi’s severe level of pollution, it was not the worst-polluted among the nearly 100 cities across India that the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) monitors daily. On three (November 2, 4 and 5) out of five days, Delhi did not even make it to the list. Yet, media attention was narrowly focused on Delhi. The government has a National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) with a target of reducing pollution by 20-30 per cent across India by 2024. Your thoughts?

The entire Indo-Gangetic Plain has pollution levels at an annual scale more than double the Indian standard. Today, more than 76 per cent of the population lives in places that do not meet Indian air quality standards. Unless we form an intersectoral plan, it will not work.

We think that rural areas are not polluted, but studies have shown that emission from household activities (cooking and heating with solid biomass and kerosene lighting) has the highest contribution at the national scale, higher than contributions from transport, power plants and industry. NCAP is a good start.

We have Ujjwala programme running and its successful implementation would ensure a large reduction in the regional pollution level. Eventually programmes such as NCAP, Ujjwala, Smart City Missions need to be linked.

Note: AQI, a composite number for many pollutants, is used by governments to communicate to the public how polluted the air is. AQI of 100 is considered satisfactory in India. This graph only includes cities that had an AQI above 400 on that day.

What do you think about India’s air pollution standards? The WHO has said that no amount of PM 2.5 is healthy exposure, and India’s standards are three times higher than WHO-prescribed safe levels.

Indian standard is surely very high, but that is the first target. This needs to be kept in mind. This is why AQI gives a false sense of security. As per the current AQI, good is anything below 50, which is actually not good as per WHO and numerous studies. This is why, when pollution levels drop to moderate (100-200), people think it's better, but it's not. We need more awareness, and that too outside Delhi.

Coming back to Delhi and north India, how big a problem are crop burning and fire-crackers? How much do they contribute to Delhi-NCR’s pollution load?

On a given day, crop burning contribution can be very high, but keep in mind that crop burning is only for a couple of weeks. What about the rest of the year? No doubt that we need to control crop burning but we should not blame crop burning alone. There are some studies which have shown large influence of firecrackers on those days (pollution spikes during Diwali). Again these are periodic sources.

There are efforts to bring down crop burning which should be effective in a few years. But at the same time, we need to work on reducing emissions from other sources in the National Capital Region and the entire Indo-Gangetic Plain. This will not happen overnight and needs inter-sectoral approaches. Several recommendations are available. They need to be implemented properly.

(For the spike in pollution, Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal blamed stubble burning in the adjacent states of Haryana and Punjab, where hundreds of thousands of farmers burn crop residue after paddy cultivation to quickly clear their fields to sow winter crops.

However, contribution of stubble burning in Delhi’s air pollution was never more than 50 per cent this season, until November 5, 2019, as per data from the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR), an arm of the Ministry of Earth Science. The maximum contribution by stubble burning was recorded on October 31, 2019, at 44 per cent.)

Why does pollution spike during winters?

In October, as temperatures start dropping, the height of the mixing layer (the layer adjacent to the ground over which an emitted particle rests) reduces, trapping the pollutants closer to the ground. Even if your emissions remain constant, pollution levels will increase. Therefore, there is no other way than reducing emissions, and this can happen if you target all the sources. That does not happen overnight, you need to plan year-round.

Will the ‘odd-even’ scheme work? What were the findings of your study assessing this exercise in January 2016?

Previously, we found that it did not work except at three local places--where pollution reduced by up to 10 per cent only. This was because too many exemptions were added in the scheme and the meteorology was unfavourable.

The study concluded that traffic restrictions between January 1 and January 15, 2016, reduced PM 2.5 by 4-6 per cent on average, and by a maximum of 10 per cent at three locations. The failure of the scheme was attributed to stable meteorological conditions, which meant that winds were not strong enough to disperse PM 2.5 away, or impact the PM 2.5 outside the periphery of the city, where the scheme was not implemented. Restricting traffic volume alone cannot control the PM 2.5 concentration over Delhi, which has multiple sources.

There were three other studies on the ‘odd-even’ scheme with different results. For example, a study by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) showed larger reductions, while the CPCB study was not sure about the impacts. Another study by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and India Meteorological Department (IMD) said that pollution increased on those days. Can a common thread be found among all of these studies?

The CPCB study you mentioned also did not find large-scale reduction. It could not find any clear trend in the concentration level of PM 2.5. “Overall, it can be stated that while some reduction in air pollution is likely to happen due to odd-even scheme, a single factor or action cannot substantially reduce air pollution levels in Delhi,” it said.

Other studies have found different results due to different methodologies and analysis designs. The divergent results across studies require careful deliberation and reconciliation. Therefore government officials and media commentators should not rush to declare the scheme as a success or failure prematurely.

The June 2016 study by EPIC, which evaluated both phases of the ‘odd-even’ scheme in 2016 (January and April), found that relative to surrounding satellite cities, PM 2.5 concentrations in Delhi’s air were lower by 14-16 per cent during the January pilot. In contrast, the programme did not affect Delhi’s air quality during the warmer month of April.

The 2018 study, jointly conducted by IITM, Pune, IMD, New Delhi and the Ministry of Earth Sciences, said that pollution increased during this period as vehicular emissions did not reduce. “...Many four-wheeler users chose to commute earlier, to beat the 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. restrictions, and/or there was an increase in the number of exempted public transport vehicles,” it said.

Two-wheelers emit about 32 per cent, diesel trucks 28 per cent, four-wheeled private cars 22 per cent, CNG buses 7 per cent and auto-rickshaws 4 per cent, of the total transport pollution in Delhi, as per data from the Centre for Science and Environment. Given that the ‘odd-even’ scheme exempts two-wheelers, can it succeed?

Without two wheelers it may not succeed. Also one needs to be careful about interpreting outcomes (of the scheme). Day-to-day variability in air pollution is influenced by weather.

How do you assess Delhi’s Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), which requires 48 hours of above-300 PM 2.5 concentration to come into action? GRAP includes emergency measures to cut pollution--ban on garbage burning, entry of trucks into the city and the closure of power plants, brick kilns and stone crushers.

GRAP is a good initiative but it is for an emergency situation. Do you like to treat a patient with medicine before he goes into a coma or do you act after when very few choices are left?

Delhi pollution: 37 flights diverted, 100 delayed and 19 cancelled

Thirty eight aircraft operating out of Delhi were diverted due to a severe decline in visibility in India's capital city. Around 100 flights were delayed and 19 cancelled till 8 PM.

Visibility on both runways of the airport dropped to 600 metres from 9 AM to 1:30 PM.

"Due to low visibility at Delhi Airport, 37 flights have been diverted between 9 am and 1 pm to places including Jaipur, Amritsar and Lucknow among other cities," said a spokesperson of Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL).

DIAL, which operates the Delhi Airport, is owned by infrastructure major GMR Infra. Delhi is India's busiest airport and handles around 1,400 aircraft per day.

Pollution broke all records in Delhi and National Capital Region (NVR) as Air Quality Index touches the 'unbreathable' mark of 1000.

The cost of diverting an aircraft impacts finances and operations of an airline and points to the far reaching impact the ongoing air pollution crisis can harm the economy of one of the fastest growing country of the world.

While diverting, an aircraft burns fuel, pilots duty hours gets extended posing operational and cash burn issues for an airline.

Normally airlines prepare for operations in low visibility conditions by scheduling capable aircraft and crews in such conditions. However, the unusual timing of such conditions caught them off guard.

"We train a certain number of pilots for operating in low visibility conditions and from first week of December, usually pair them in aircraft operating out of North Indian airports in early morning hours. However, such conditions in first week of November was not at all accounted for," an Air India official who handles operations for the airline said.

"Lots of diversions and disruptions today across airlines due to low visibility at Delhi Airport, unprecedented for this time of the year, this is not fog season yet," Sanjiv Kapoor, Chief Commercial Officer at Vistara said. Vistara was forced to cancel four flights till latest information available at 8 PM.

A senior official of Indian Meteorology Department also termed the event as unusual blaming pollutants in air for deterring rain. "The particulate matter in the air is obstructing proper rainfall. The raindrops are also getting more than usually scattered due to the particulate matters in air allowing the air pollution to hang," a senior executive of Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said.

The light rain also worsened the situation increasing humidity and thereby helping the pollutants getting more concentrated, said the IMD executive.

The IMD official said that visibility at Delhi Airport normally stays poor during the early morning hours (5 AM- 11 AM). "But today what we saw was that visibility was started deteriorating at around 9 AM and continued till 1:30 PM. We don't know yet if it is a permanent change due to the pollution but if it is so then fog preparedness routine of the airport needs to be readjusted," he said.

The unprecedented change in weather pattern has also forced to rethink scheduling of crew for airlines. Sources said that IndiGo and Air India have decided to put pilots trained in low visibility operations in early morning flights for the next two days.

What it means is that airlines have to train a larger pool of pilot for low weather preparations and incur an additional cost. The cost of the training costs around Rs 25 lakh per pilot.

"We used to prepare for maximum 30 days of low visibility conditions from second week of December to early January. If such conditions due to pollution are permanent, we are likely to deal such conditions three months," an airlines executive said.

Air pollution kills 1.2 mn Indians in a year, third biggest cause of death

Exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution contributed to over 1.2 million deaths in India in 2017, a new global study said on Wednesday.

The study titled "State of Global Air 2019" reported that the life on average of a South Asian child growing up in current high levels of air pollution will be shortened by two years and six months, while the global life expectancy loss is 20 months.

At the same time, the study noted, India has initiated major steps to address pollution sources like the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, accelerated Bharat Stage VI clean vehicle standards and the new National Clean Air Programme.

"These and future initiatives have the potential, if fully implemented as part of a sustained commitment to air quality, to result in significant health benefits in coming years," Health Effects Institute Vice President Robert O'Keefe said in a statement to IANS.

The Health Effects Institute is an independent, non-profit research institute funded jointly by the US Environmental Protection Agency, industry, foundations and development banks.

Worldwide, air pollution is responsible for more deaths than many better-known risk factors such as malnutrition, alcohol use and physical inactivity, according to the annual report.

In India, air pollution is the third highest cause of death among all health risks, ranking just above smoking. Every year, more people globally die from air pollution related diseases than from road traffic injuries or malaria.

Overall, long-term exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution contributed to nearly five million deaths from stroke, diabetes, heart attack, lung cancer and chronic lung disease in 2017.

Out of these, three million deaths are directly attributed to PM2.5, half of which are generated from India and China together.

South Asia -- Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan -- is the most polluted region, with over 1.5 million air-pollution related deaths.

The report found China and India together were responsible for over half of the total global attributable deaths, with each country facing over 1.2 million deaths from air pollution in 2017.

China has made initial progress, beginning to achieve air pollution declines.

For the first time, 2019's report includes worldwide estimates of the effect of air pollution on how long people live, or life expectancy.

Worldwide, air pollution reduced life expectancy by an average 20 months in 2017, a global impact rivalling that of smoking; this means a child born today will die 20 months sooner, on average, than would be expected without air pollution.

The report also highlighted that nearly half of the world's population -- a total of 3.6 billion people -- were exposed to household air pollution in 2017.

Globally, there has been progress: the proportion of people cooking with solid fuels has declined as economies develop.

But in India, 60 per cent of the population still uses solid fuels; in Bangladesh that number rises to 79 per cent, underscoring the importance of achieving success in government initiatives to address the problem.

And household air pollution can be a major source of impact in outdoor air: with indoor pollution emitted to the outdoor air being the largest cause of health impacts from among all sources in India, contributing to one in four outdoor air pollution related deaths.

The State of Global Air 2019 report and accompanying interactive website are designed and implemented by the Health Effects Institute in cooperation with the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Texas, Austin.

Rapid phasing out of fossil fuels could prevent three million premature deaths annually worldwide

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) said the most significant contribution would be the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels, which is currently being discussed mainly to abate climate change.

The researchers used a global atmospheric chemistry and climate model, linked to the latest estimates of health effects in order to study the combined impact of decarbonisation on public health, precipitation and the climate.

The researchers calculated that fossil fuel generated emissions are responsible for about 65 per cent of premature deaths from human-made air pollutants worldwide.

Phasing out the use of fossil fuels would prevent more than three million premature deaths annually worldwide, researchers said.

"If all sources of air pollution from human activities could be eliminated, that number would further rise to more than five million per year," added Professor Andy Haines from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who is also a co-author of the study.

Reduced air pollution would not only have a positive effect on human health but would also influence the climate.