
Delhi’s air is so toxic that schools are closing, expats are fleeing - enra
http://qz.com/828754/india-pollution-schools-shut-down-expats-flee-and-the-visiting-uk-pm-theresa-may-risks-losing-hours-from-her-life-as-delhi-chokes/
======
nodesocket
Just finished watching the film Before The Flood and the representative from
India's Centre For Science and Environment really frustrated and upset me. She
was blaming US consumption as the source of the problem and how we don't
practice what we preach. Our air is not poisonous, we don't have 300 million
citizens without power living in poverty. The US has some of the best and
greatest companies working on energy (see Tesla) and it is time India stop
blaming the US and start putting in the work on their own.

See the following short clip from the film:
[https://youtu.be/90CkXVF-Q8M?t=36m2s](https://youtu.be/90CkXVF-Q8M?t=36m2s)

~~~
legolas2412
Even on absolute levels, India's pollution is a fraction of US. US also still
gets 60% electricity from fossil fuels. It is time US fixes their science and
education when a major political candidate and half of their population are
climate change deniers. Oh, and they are the most polluting in the world, even
in per capita numbers.

PM2.5 and PM10 corruption are dangerous only for people in the region and are
not responsible for global warming, which affects everyone. In essence, India
is killing its own people and US is killing everyone.

~~~
nodesocket
Fact check. Total US CO2 emissions as of 2014 was 5.3 million, India's was 2.3
million. That's not a huge difference. Also, China produces twice the amount
of CO2 as the US [see 1]. India has 700M people who use cow dung as their
source of fire. Once India progresses in terms of fuels they will overtake the
US and potentially China.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions)

~~~
victornomad
So basically you are saying that the US emissions are more than 2x India's.
Taking into account that India has 3x the population of the US then it means
that

US emissions are 6 times bigger than India in terms of population

<sarcasm>Everything is awesomeeee</sarcasm>

~~~
refurb
You need energy to make stuff and the US GDP is 14x that of India.

~~~
Alterlife
You basically just said that the US is allowed to pollute more than India
because they make more money.

~~~
refurb
Make more stuff. How much energy does it take to make cars that are sold all
over the world?

~~~
Alterlife
I don't know how much energy it takes, but:

1\. Do you?

2\. America doesn't make all the cars in the world.

According to wikipedia, America made just over 12 million vehicles in FY2015,
and India made just over 4 million.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_motor_veh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_motor_vehicle_production)

I would also point out that India made MORE steel than the USA in the same
period. Another polluting industry.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production)

3\. The US has gone through similar stages of growth. Pollution in cities
dropped as measures were taken to improve the quality of life over there, and
as technology improved.

[http://www.businessinsider.in/This-Old-Picture-Of-
Manhattan-...](http://www.businessinsider.in/This-Old-Picture-Of-Manhattan-
Smog-Looks-Just-Like-Beijing-Today/articleshow/21441974.cms) .

4\. None of the above matters.

That's the wrong metric you're looking at. If the US and India both stopped
making cars or invested in lower pollution manufacturing methods, that would
reduce the pollutant output. It would also reduce GDP.

Neither country is willing to sacrifice their growth and industry, and so the
whole world chooses to keep boiling the frog.

~~~
intended
I think the point being made is that America made harsher pollution laws to
fix pollution internally, with the side effect that pollution was exported to
factories that did the manufacturing (and polluting) in other nations.

Until very recently (in historic terms), America was the consumer of a large
share of goods produced in those markets.

So I don't think you can say technology improvements are a prime reason for
mfg pollution dropping in America. It is A reason, but not the only.

------
SingAlong
I just got back from Delhi. I started coughing as soon as I landed in the
airport 4 days ago. The air is almost unbreatheable.

However, the working-class people I've come across don't seem to be worried
about it from a health perspective (or they don't show it off). Infact my
friend's wedding had a lot of crackers. Life as usual for them.

For a comparison, here's what Red Fort looks like at 4pm, 05-NOV-2016 (my pic
is about 30hrs older than this comment):
[https://twitter.com/HashNuke/status/795380966109810688](https://twitter.com/HashNuke/status/795380966109810688)

And this is what it is supposed to look like:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/wheresmichi/433396865/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/wheresmichi/433396865/)

~~~
X86BSD
The latter is how I remember it at dusk two years ago ween I visited it. Wow.

I hope you enjoyed the place as much as I did even with the pollution!

I think most there don't really understand the health hazard or how bad it is
for them because it's all they know. Put them in Kansas City for a week and
send them back and I promise you'll see some people freaking out heh.

~~~
truncate
>> I think most there don't really understand the health hazard or how bad it
is for them because it's all they know.

Its not just that. Even if people are aware of health hazards, they think they
can make exceptions for themselves because one person isn't gonna make things
worse.

I lived first half of my life in relatively cleaner Himalayan regions, and
when I moved to Delhi, I was almost always sneezing. I already was miserable
living there, and now its worse. :(

------
sandGorgon
Again, the most interesting part of the news has been left out -
[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/world/asia/farmers-
unch...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/world/asia/farmers-unchecked-
crop-burning-fuels-indias-air-pollution.html)

In fact, thus article could be termed as fairly incorrect. The pollution
exists, but the reasoning is wrong. The firecracker usage this year was much
less than last year because of a lot of pollution campaigns.

The problem is millions of tons of agricultural waste being burned in
neighboring states. It's an interesting problem to which there is no ready
answer. The govt is trying to introduce "seeders" which can help farmers plant
their farms without burning older waste... but it's too expensive for the poor
farmers to adopt.

Some of us are thinking about how to cobble together seeders using old tractor
parts,etc.

TLDR - if you know a cheap way to plant in fields, without burning the hay of
the last crop, you will solve the North Indian pollution problem to a large
degree.

Other problems exist - but that is being addressed.

~~~
viraptor
It's mentioned in the article. In section "The road to hell":

> “Fireworks during Diwali marginally added to the pollution… But other things
> inside Delhi did not drastically change. So the smog is mainly due to smoke
> from farm fires,” Kejriwal said.

> Every year around this time, farmers in Punjab and Haryana—the predominantly
> agricultural states to the west and northwest of Delhi—burn the leftover
> straw in their rice and wheat fields. This is the cheapest way to prepare
> the land for the next season of sowing.

~~~
bogomipz
The same thing has with palm oil plantations in Malaysia. It effects the air
quality as far away as Singapore:

[https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2015/nov/11...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2015/nov/11/indonesia-forest-fires-explained-haze-palm-oil-timber-
burning)

------
jakozaur
PM10, PM2.5 is different from other pollution like CO2.

CO2 is causing a lot of damage for the whole planet in long run, but in short
it is neutral for local communities. Still getting off CO2 is a challenge that
we don't have a good answer to (but working on it).

PM10, PM2.5 are air debris which are causing a lot of damage to people around,
but don't have long term global impact. With current technologies most of the
first world countries are able to keep them at low level even with significant
fossil fuel usage. The key is to have cars with good emission standards, heat
systems with efficient burning cycles, air particle filters...

PM10, PM2.5 you can feel, CO2 is invisible to our senses. I was shocked how
heavy New Delhi air is when I visited this year. They are trying to fix by
using more CNG vehicles, but with current income level and crumbling
infrastructure it will most likely take decades.

------
toyg
It's not surprising that China, India and other developing countries are going
through the same pains "the West" experienced up to 20 years ago - which
stopped right about the time we outsourced our most polluting industries to...
China, India and other developing countries.

What is interesting is watching how they try to fix it. There was much noise
about pollution during the Beijing Olympics - how is the situation there,
right now? Can it be a model for Delhi? Will these countries have to walk the
same path we did, or will technology let their manufacturing capabilities
survive?

~~~
edblarney
" are going through the same pains "the West" experienced up to 20 years ago"

20 years?

Ha ha ...

No, this was a problem that started with the industrial revolution, and
policies were introduced to fix the issues shortly thereafter.

18th-century UK was probably the first bit of 'overt environmental problems',
the Thames was a mess, smog everywhere ...

But it was addressed long, long ago.

Different strokes for different folks in different times ... but it doesn't
take 'high tech' to have decent policy that addresses these issues.

India has some pretty deep problems, this is only one of many symptoms.

~~~
gnipgnip
Not true. Lakes and Rivers all over the US (and Japan) were badly polluted and
frothing in the 60s.

~~~
edblarney
I'm not saying they weren't!

I'm saying that 'environmental consciousness' as a civic issue started in
London in the early 19th century, not '20 years ago'.

By the time pollution was bad from the plastic-chemical revolutions of the
1960's there was already a conscientiousness very well developed.

One major difference: the pollution from coal in the industrial age was
visible. From the 1950's chemical revolution - it was not. And so it wasn't
evident to the average person that the pollution was 'hurting'. Much like
smoking - it takes some science etc. to show it's bad.

------
noipv4
I was in Delhi during the diwali celebrations. The air smells like half-burned
logwood. I initially thought that someone in the neighbourhood has lit fallen
leaves on fire. Little did I know that farmers all around the city are
lighting crop stubbles. Come diwali eve and the air turned acrid, a poisonous
cocktail of burnt diesel particles, smoke and smell of burnt gun-powder. It
was a real Nasty experience (it's way worse than my experience in Inland
Empire CA in summer). Even Google weather shows the weather condition as
"smoke".

~~~
canttestthis
Not all around the city. There aren't any farms in the Metro area. It's the
neighboring states' farms that are burning crops.

------
habosa
I've never been to Delhi, I don't have plans to go, so I can't really explain
why this makes me so angry. It's the tragedy of the commons, an entire city of
people slowly killing each other.

What's going on over there? Can anyone who knows more about India explain why
the people and the government would let things get like this? To pollute our
own towns to the point of suffocation says something terrible about human
nature.

~~~
accurrent
It's easy to blame the people and the gov't for pollution, but having lived in
both India and China the story is quite different. You have swathes of
population that need employment . In order to keep the economy productive you
have to have manufacturing activity. To support the manufacturing activity one
must produce energy. Naturally coal being abundant and cheap becomes the first
choice for governments to use for energy production. While we can criticise
the coal plants for being polluting without them there is no source of
employment. Most renewables are too expensive/unreliable to use and nuclear
power plants alway come along with a lot of controversy.

Another thing to note is that the overall pollution per capita in India or
China is far less than any of the western nations. Its just that these
countries have way too many people in too less space.

As for schools closing due to pollution, I can say that this is common all
across asia. The thing is many of the industries that pollute go unchecked
partly due to corruption and partly due to the fact that if they are fined
they will just withdraw from the area of operation causing many to loose their
means of living. In a place like india this becomes a question of life or
death because many earn too less to save enough.

The question that lies ahead is more "how can we solve this issue" than to lay
blame. Perhaps the government needs to look at what the pollution is made up
of and specifically target those industries.

~~~
CydeWeys
> Another thing to note is that the overall pollution per capita in India or
> China is far less than any of the western nations.

This isn't true, not for the type of pollution relevant to this discussion
anyway (particulates suspended in air). A single two stroke moped releases
10-1000X the amount of air pollution per kilometer as a modern car with a
catalytic converter, despite the latter being much larger. India is full of
such mopeds. Here's a study about them:
[http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4749](http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4749)

The figure you cited, that citizens of developed nations pollute more than
citizens of developing nation , is specifically a statistic about carbon
dioxide emissions. Most other kinds of pollution are worse per capita in
developing industrial nations owing to less strict emissions controls.

------
X86BSD
My wife is from noida, a suburb of Delhi. Her mother, brother and other family
live there in the NCR area.

We talked to her mom two days ago and she says it's so bad now she can't even
see the road when she goes out in an auto.

Her brothers latest post to Facebook is "feeling suffocated! Have to get out
of this city!"

When I was there two years ago, my first time in India, I had no idea what to
expect. The second the plane landed and we were pulling up to the gate my very
first comment was "Do you smell something burning?" To my wife.

The second I got into the concourse I knew what it was. The airport was filled
with smog. It was a little shocking.

The fact that it's gotten so much worse that two years later you can't even
see the road is mind blowing.

I thought kejriwals plan for limiting the roads to odd plate numbers one day
then even the next was a good idea to help cut the pollution.

The problem was apparently the people, just like here, hated it because it was
his plan and not modi's, plus the people never would have followed it because
well the saying cutting your nose off to spite your face is appropriate here.
The people won't tolerate that inconvenience even though they are literally
killing themselves.

The wife's mother retires in august. She has two months of vacation built up.
We told her to simply take the two months come June and move here to the
states.

China has bad pollution problems to deal with too. But man looking at India
you can see an absolute failure of government to serve the people.

There are too many people in their cities. Delhi is a mess. Bangalore as well.
I don't know exactly what indias energy supplies look like but they are
certainly past a redline where petrol burning vehicles should be banned.
Things moved over to natgas or major mass transit infrastructure should have
been the primary focus decades ago.

I can see how it hasn't been though with the astonishing level of corruption
and nationalism preventing foreign companies from coming in and investing and
solving some of their problems.

It's so sad. I loved the country. It's beautiful. With such character,
potential, and such life! But it's just become such a cesspool. Homelessness,
corruption, rapes, pollution, human trafficking, poverty.

Law enforcement is a joke and couldn't enforce anything in that country.

If you get hit by a car and it's a life threatening injury, say your prayers
because you are dead. Help will never reach you in time. There are no traffic
laws, none that anyone there follows, no one moves for emergency vehicles,
it's dog eat dog. Brutal.

It's almost my definition of a failed state. I think the good nature of the
people is the only thing keeping it from the giant flush of collapsing
civilization.

~~~
1024core
> It's almost my definition of a failed state.

60 years ago, John Galbraith, the economist and Ambassador to India, called
India a "functional anarchy". He meant that the country survived _despite_ the
government, and not because of it.

It has survived 60 years since Galbraith's keen observation. It will continue
to do so.

~~~
jaskerr
Do you have a source for that quote? I don't doubt it; I'd like to have a
source to refer others to.

~~~
1024core
Lots of references here: [http://bfy.tw/8bhJ](http://bfy.tw/8bhJ)

------
whack
It's worth keeping in mind that urban activity accounts for only ~20℅ of the
particulate matter in Delhi. Take a look at the following graph. Other major
Indian cities like Mumbai are run very similarly to Delhi, and yet, their
levels are 80℅ lower.

[http://qz.com/829182/this-one-chart-shows-delhis-
apocalyptic...](http://qz.com/829182/this-one-chart-shows-delhis-apocalyptic-
pollution-compared-to-the-rest-of-india/)

There was a more detailed article I read a few months ago (nytimes?) that went
into the geographical details of how regional airflow and weather patterns
play a major role in explaining the huge variation you see in the above chart.

------
philippnagel
What's the current state of air cleaning technology? Plants (e.g. moss), or
did someone engineer something more efficient already?

~~~
X86BSD
That's a good question. I'm not sure at this point if you could deploy enough
of them to make a dent.

Even if you could magically ban all polluting industry tomorrow unless
scrubbers were installed within 30 days and all cars were burning natgas I
don't know if it would be enough. At some point real soon I imagine water is
going to start reaching toxic levels from rain pulling all the toxins out of
the sky. And then ecosystems starting to collapse.

~~~
MichaelBurge
Someone should design a bacteria that can eat pollution.

~~~
X86BSD
If I remember right but I may not be I think I have read they found one that
eats arsenic. I'm going to have to double check that though.

~~~
ars
Arsenic is an element, you can eat it, but it's still there, just inside the
bacteria.

However different compounds of arsenic have different toxicity - elemental
arsenic is most toxic, organic arsenic less so, so perhaps that's what they do
- convert it to a less toxic form.

Interestingly mercury is the opposite - elemental mercury isn't very toxic
(because it's a metal and just doesn't absorb, it just stays as a clump of
metal). But organic mercury is very toxic because the organic part makes it
available to interfere with biological processes.

------
gnipgnip
Other than the doom and gloom, what is the standard practice in other paddy
growing regions in Asia and India ?

If the state really wanted to help, they'd do well to believe their word is
that of the God, and actively help with practices.

[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Crop-fires-
already-...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Crop-fires-already-on-
in-Punjab-Haryana-satellite-pictures-show/articleshow/54860196.cms)

------
leafee
I just came to visit New Delhi from the US and the air is indeed horrible.
Visibility is very low and it's not the usual winter fog. My eyes are itchy
and am developing some sinus headache. (I'm not generally susceptible to any
respiratory issues). Masks have all sold out.

Reported PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels have reached new records. One newspaper
showed that the levels for some metrics are how high that the usual meters are
all maxed out and can't even measure it.

------
gnipgnip
I fear we are rapidly approaching a Malthusian urban die-off; almost
unimaginable that this won't happen if once we get past peak-oil.

------
bfrog
We are after all our own worst enemies

