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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Why Delhi Turns Into a Gas Chamber and How it Affects Much More Than Our Health -Krishna AchutaRao

Why Delhi Turns Into a Gas Chamber and How it Affects Much More Than Our Health -Krishna AchutaRao

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published Published on Nov 13, 2017   modified Modified on Nov 13, 2017
-Firstpost.com

Delhiites are cursed by geography to be prone to a meteorological phenomenon called inversion where warm air rests above the colder air closer to the ground, preventing it from mixing upwards thereby trapping all that we put into it – almost like a lid

Delhi’s pollution episodes at this time of the year have become an annual affair - the latest one has the Chief Minister comparing Delhi to a gas chamber.

Like Los Angeles and Mexico City, Delhiites are cursed by geography to be prone to a meteorological phenomenon called inversion where warm air rests above the colder air closer to the ground, preventing it from mixing upwards thereby trapping all that we put into it – almost like a lid. This lid extends across the Indo-Gangetic plain through much of the winter months, leaving it covered in a haze and exposing millions to bad air quality.

During the months leading up to the monsoon, much of this semi-arid region is dry and dusty winds from as far away as the Sahara and Arabian deserts and our own Thar Desert bring in mineral dust. This dust subsides after the monsoon rain and lead to a few months of relatively clean air. As the monsoon retreats and high-pressure area forms over North India, our pollution levels creep up.

This pollution is a toxic mix of mineral dust (kicked up by construction activity and road traffic), soot, carbon monoxide, ozone, oxides of Sulphur and Nitrogen, and a host of other chemicals. Most of these pollutants are a result of combustion – of things we burn for various reasons.

While natural dust tends to be larger in size, the products of combustion react to form particles small enough (‘PM2.5’ or less than 2.5 microns diameter) to penetrate through to the lungs and enter our blood stream causing a myriad of health problems. Air pollution is the leading environmental cause of death worldwide and results in 1.1 million early deaths in India according to the Global Burden of Disease report.

Humans have been burning things for a long time now – to clear land for agriculture, for cooking and heating, and powering the industrial revolution. The products of this burning can travel far and affect remote places. Scientists have found evidence of pollution from foundries and smelting dating back to the early Roman Empire in ice samples from Greenland, and in the blackened lungs of mummified bodies in Egypt and England. And historians have recorded that Roman courts considered civil claims over smoke pollution 2,000 years ago and under Emperor Justinian in 535, even tried a very early version of the Clean Air Act.

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Firstpost.com, 12 November, 2017, http://www.news18.com/news/india/analysis-why-delhi-turns-into-a-gas-chamber-and-how-it-affects-much-more-than-our-health-1574357.html


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