DownToEarth The Aral Sea, the world’s fourth-largest lake until the early 1960s, dried up after that decade in Soviet Central Asia and became a byword for environmental disaster later, almost on the lines of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Now, a new study has found that the desert which emerged due to the drying up of the lake, has made Central Asia a much Dustier place. Not only is the Dust more hazardous...

Urgent action needed to curb deadly air pollution in South Asia A new report by the World Bank states that Nine out of the world’s 10 cities with the worst air pollution are in South Asia. Ambient air pollution is a public health crisis for South Asia, not only imposing high economic costs but also causing an estimated 2 million premature deaths each year. The health impacts of air pollution range...

-IndiaToday.in Air emergencies, heat waves, water shortages, street flooding, garbage spillovers, traffic jams and noise pollution… Delhi has become unlivable and no urban planning can fix this unsustainable concrete jungle. It’s time we seriously looked at moving the capital out to let the city heal and live. In the last few years, winter in Delhi has become depressingly synonymous with toxic air pollution. During summers, drinking water shortages leave the city parched...

-The Hindu Everybody has a favourite villain to blame, yet the herd of restive elephants in the room is led by a particularly malevolent matriarch — corruption The floods have abated in Bengaluru. As individuals struggle to clean their houses, the silt on the roads left behind by the receding water — now a fine Dust that flies in the air choking us — is a reminder of those difficult times. Various analyses...

-The Telegraph Findings suggest if India is able to meet clean air targets, anaemia prevalence among women in the reproductive age would fall from 53 per cent to about 39 per cent Long-term exposure to air pollution could contribute to anaemia among women of reproductive age through systemic inflammation triggered by inhalation of tiny particulate matter (PM) smaller than 2.5 microns, researchers have cautioned. A team of researchers at the Indian Institute of...