The story so far: For a brief period in October, Mumbai’s air quality matched the stifling haze that covered the national capital, where people complained of burning eyes, choking and troubled breathing. The Air Quality Index (AQI) across different parts of Maharashtra turned from orange (“poor”) to red (“very poor”), crossing the 300 mark. Maharashtra’s health department this week, in its first communique since residents complained of the ‘toxic’ air, introduced a ‘Health Action Plan.’ The civic body will monitor how elevated AQI levels affect pollution-related illnesses across 17 regions. Districts will strengthen surveillance programs to track, how many cardiac, respiratory and other such conditions were reported in a spot with a high AQI.
Three of the world’s 10 most polluted cities are in India right now, says Swiss group IQAir. India is also witnessing multiple health alarm bells go off at once — cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases have been called ‘ticking time bombs’, as non-communicable diseases pose a health and economic burden. The 2020 State of Global Air termed air pollution the ‘biggest health risk in India,’ as indoor and outdoor air pollution in 2019 contributed to more than 16.7 lakh deaths linked to stroke, heart attack, diabetes, lung cancer, chronic lung diseases and neonatal diseases.
Weaving health in climate action plans helps plot local patterns of diseases related to air pollution, says Dr. Pallavi Pant, who leads the Health Effects Institute’s Global Health programme; the data can piece together a geographic and epidemiological picture of communities most exposed to bad air, helping to reduce climate inequalities in the long run.
