Piecemeal measures won’t clear the air pollution ‘haze’

Earlier this month, massive wildfires destroyed acres of vineyards and forests in northern California in the US. Starting from Napa Valley, the  fires spread, alarmingly, through the small towns in the Bay Area, destroying houses and taking a toll of over 40 human lives.

The skies, which are usually as blue as irises here, turned a turbid bluish-grey last Wednesday, since the fire broke out. The air smelt of burnt wood even in towns 100 miles away.  Air quality made headlines on local media. Air pollution was being monitored real time on local websites.  Most schools were shut for a couple of days. Parent networks were buzzing with emails about air quality concerns. Children were disallowed from playing outdoors at recess.

This season, before Halloween, is when the local communities have harvest festivals, a lively affair with games and stalls selling local, organic produce, something that is a near obsession with Californians. The forest fire dampened this event for many neighbourhoods and schools as several outdoor activities were cancelled or scaled down.

In a local school in Palo Alto, one parent tried to find a bright spot in the widespread disappointment and said, “At least we got to have an indoor bake sale this year!” Another worried mother did not send her daughter to her kindergarten class even after schools resumed, because “the air filters in the classroom were not too good.” “It’s Beijing!” she said, shaking her head in dismay.

While the “severe and unhealthy air quality conditions”  have upset the daily lives of people in one of the richest regions of the world, as a visitor from the National Capital Region, I have been wondering what the fuss is about. Used to the terrible air of Indian cities all my life, I barely registered any change in the atmosphere.

So how unhealthy is the air?

The Air Quality Index is a yardstick that runs from 0 to 500, the higher the number, the more the pollution. Towns in the Bay Area are being  classified as having air quality that is Good, Moderate, Unhealthy for  Sensitive Groups, Unhealthy, Very Unhealthy and Hazardous, as per the norms of the Environment Protection Agency of the US Government. As I  write this, four days after the fires, the AQI in the San Francisco Bay Area is 155 classified as “Unhealthy.”  

What is it back home, I wonder. In Delhi, it is 334 at smoke-filled Anand Vihar inter-state bus depot in the east, falling into the “hazardous” category. At its minimum in Dwarka in the west of the capital, the AQI is 184, about 30 points more than that of the Bay Area’s. Even at the US Embassy in the posh diplomatic enclave of Lutyen’s Delhi, the AQI is 221. In Mumbai’s US Consulate in Bandra Kurla Complex, the AQI was 180. In Chennai, the maximum AQI value for the day was 163, which was almost the same as Beijing on the same day. In Kanpur, considered to  be the most polluted city of India, the AQI was 197. A WHO report shows that 13 of the world’s top 25 polluted cities are in India.

If schools in all these Indian cities were to shut because of air quality,  most Indian children would have to be homeschooled. A couple of years ago, the New York Times’ South Asia correspondent, whose child could no longer handle the lethal air of Delhi, returned to his home country. He wrote a widely circulated article explaining why the terrible levels of air pollution were damaging his son’s health.

It was a shame that a little boy came to India and took back chronic asthma as a memento. It is no different from the embarrassment that we ought to feel when foreign women tourists are harassed by lecherous Indian men. Both are evidence of our failures at both political and social levels.

For children who do not have the option of fleeing the country, there is no  choice but to develop a high tolerance for poor standards of living. No matter what the level of particulate matter in the atmosphere, our children march on, through vehicle exhaust or factory smoke, unmindfully  inhaling fumes and dust. Parents could be an unlikely but powerful  pressure group to push action towards clearing the grey haze over our  children’s heads. What’s the point of an education if children are not going to be healthy enough to enjoy its benefits?

The WHO  estimates that half the world is enduring air pollution about 2.5 times more than acceptable levels. But the difference is that many are taking active steps towards reducing it. Cities in Latin America are experimenting with “smog-eating” technologies on buildings. Manila painted its streets with air-cleaning paint on its busiest streets. Banning cracker sale on Diwali seems like a gimmick when all the other days no court or authority cares about the lungs of Indian children.

The writer is author of the book Urban Villager: Life in an Indian satellite town