India’s capital New Delhi switched schools to online classes Monday until further notice as worsening toxic smog surged past 60 times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum.
Various piecemeal government initiatives have failed to measurably address the problem, with the smog blamed for thousands of premature deaths each year and particularly impacting the health of children and the elderly.
Levels of PM2.5 pollutants — dangerous cancer-causing microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs — peaked at 907 micrograms per cubic metre on Monday morning, according to IQAir pollution monitors, with a reading above 15 in a 24-hour period considered unhealthy by the WHO.
Individual monitoring stations noted even higher levels — one recorded PM2.5 pollutants at 980, 65 times the WHO maximum.
“My eyes have been burning for the last few days”, said rickshaw puller Subodh Kumar, 30.
“Pollution or no pollution, I have to be on the road, where else will I go?” he said, pausing from eating breakfast at a roadside stall.
“We don’t have an option to stay indoors… our livelihood, food, and life — everything is in the open.”
Dense grey and acrid smog smothered the city, with IQAir listing conditions as “hazardous”.
The city is blanketed in poisonous smog each year, primarily blamed on stubble burning by farmers in neighbouring regions to clear their fields for ploughing, as well as factories and traffic fumes.
A report by The New York Times this month, based on samples collected over five years, revealed dangerous fumes also spewing from a power plant incinerating the city’s landfill garbage mountains.
