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Can Delhi save itself…

June 20, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

…from its toxic air?

by Meera Subramanian

by Meera Subramanian

In A River Runs Again, I explored the devastating effects of cook fires on human and climatic health, but they are just one part of what is causing New Delhi to claim the worst air quality of any major city in the world. Since January, I’ve been researching what it is that makes Delhi’s air so toxic and what steps the city is undertaking to try to improve it. Here’s the start of the piece just published in Nature:

On winter nights, New Delhi burns with innumerable fires. Flames flicker along pavements and street corners, where the destitute huddle to stay warm and cook their suppers, while night watchmen stand guard next to their own small blazes outside private homes. The rising plumes of smoke mingle with exhaust and dust stirred up by overloaded trucks that rumble down roads blanketed in fog. The mixture melds into a nearly opaque substance that leaves a metallic taste on the tongue. Overhead, there is not a single star to be seen.

Read the rest of “Can Delhi save itself from its toxic air?” here.

As for action, encouraging news came a couple weeks ago, with the announcement of a plan to spend almost $3 billion to reduce traffic congestion in New Delhi, although it still needs to be approved and some of the measures are ones that have failed in the past, such as Bus Rapid Transit systems. But a move for more buses, and more pedestrian crossways, and to actually make parking on a footpath an offense, is an excellent start. Increased attention to the issue is a hopeful indicator of more action to come.

If you want to know more, nonprofits such as the Centre for Science and the Environment and Care For Air both are work to inform the public about the city’s air quality, UrbanEmissions brings together concise graphics and scientific information to help understand a complicated issue, and the Air Quality in Delhi Facebook group connects concerned citizens.

I also wrote a couple of pieces specifically about the odd-even traffic reduction plan that was underway when I was in Delhi in January. “New Delhi car ban yields trove of pollution data” was in Nature and the piece with the (mildly overblown!) title “Amazing Things Happened When New Delhi Halved the Number of Cars on the Road” ran in Vice News.

Measuring air quality is incredibly tricky business. The 122 micrograms per cubic metre [Read more…]

Filed Under: journalism Tagged With: A River Runs Again, air, air pollution, air quality, Elemental India, india, New Delhi

the burning garbage heap

February 29, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

2016.02.07Deonar-151

I thought the air would improve as I traveled from New Delhi to Mumbai. Then the dump caught on fire. Here’s a dispatch for The New Yorker:

From above, the sprawling trash heap of Deonar (pronounced “Devnar”), in eastern Mumbai, resembles a large left ear. A curving stream traces its outer edge, feeding into Thane Creek, the body of water that separates the city from the Indian mainland. On the opposite side of the ear, where the head would be, is the teeming neighborhood of Shivaji Nagar. In late January, Deonar erupted in fires. An arrowhead-shaped plume of smoke floated up from the three-hundred-and-twenty-six-acre site, carried aloft by northeasterly winds, and blanketed Mumbai. For six days, the city’s  air-quality rating remained at “very poor,” with measurements of particulate matter exceeding safety standards by a factor of five. Seventy schools were closed, and hospitals were flooded with patients suffering from lung and heart ailments. (Air pollution contributes to more than six hundred thousand premature deaths in India every year.) The acrid smoke burned the eyes and throats of people from the Gateway of India, a monument at Mumbai’s southern tip, to Chembur, fifteen miles away, near the dump. Locals took to calling the neighborhood Gas Chembur.

Read the rest at The New Yorker.

Filed Under: journalism Tagged With: air pollution, compost, fire, garbage, india, Mumbai, recycling

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