Vehicle emissions from Delhi’s auto rickshaws and other petrol vehicles count for an average of 23% of pollutants in the air. Photograph: DB Pictures/Alamy
The unruly chaos of Delhi’s roads would be unrecognisable without the rickshaws and scooters that zip through India’s capital in their millions, emitting toxic fumes in their wake. But now, ambitious policies aim to give the city’s most recognisable vehicles an environmental makeover.
On Monday, Delhi’s government announced plans to eventually ban petrol scooters, motorbikes and autorickshaws in favour of those running on electricity, in an attempt to bring down dangerously high pollution levels in the city by the end of the decade.
The policies, which will phase out new petrol and gas scooters, trucks and buses in the capital over the next two years, have beIn recent years, transport has been one of the highest contributors to Delhi’s air pollution, which is consistently at levels dangerously high to human health and has become an emergency in the capital, linked totens of thousands of deaths each year.
Scooters and rickshaws – which largely run on petrol and compressed fossil gas – account for more than two-thirds of the tens of millions of vehicles on Delhi’s roads. Under the new policy, India’s capital will now issue new licence plates only to electric small trucks and three-wheelers, known as e-rickshaws, from 2027, and to e-scooters and electric motorbikes from 2028.
The Delhi government said it hoped the move would lead to an electrification of at least 30% of the capital’s vehicle fleet by 2030. “The policy focuses on pure EVs, which offer superior environmental benefits as zero-emission vehicles,” Delhi’s government said in a statement on Monday.
Amit Bhatt, the managing director or the International Council on Clean Transportation, said: “The proposed phaseout of two- and three-wheelers could be a gamechanger in Delhi’s fight against air pollution.”
Emphasising that scooters, rickshaws and trucks accounted for most of the vehicles on Delhi’s roads, Bhatt added that “accelerating their transition to zero-emission vehicles can significantly reduce vehicular emissions, improve public health, and pave the way for a broader transition to zero-emission transport across all vehicle segments”.
The Delhi state government, run by the Bharatiya Janata party, which also governs at national level, had faced significant criticism and numerous protests during the winter after it was accused of doing nothing to tackle the dangerously high pollution levels that lasted for months.
According to the government’s own figures, vehicle emissions count for an average of 23% of pollutants in the air, making it the highest single source of emissions, particularly during the toxic winter months when a thick smog routinely cloaks the city.
E-rickshaws have become an increasingly familiar sight on Delhi’s roads over the past two years, but the lack of charging points has made drivers reluctant to switch over. Under the new policy, the government has pledged to establish more than 30,000 public charging points across the capital.
Vikas Nimesh, an assistant professor at the School of Public Policy at IIT Delhi, also used the phrase “gamechanger”.
He emphasised that the availability of affordable Indian electric vehicles was rapidly expanding, with Delhi already India’s largest market. Nimesh expressed optimism that the new policy would provide impetus for manufacturers to invest in new green technology and “come up with more EV models” to provide greater consumer choice and competition.
News of the policy had yet to reach most of the city’s millions of auto-rickshaw drivers. Sitting in the shade of his rickshaw cab, parked in Delhi’s busy Connaught Place, Rajesh Gopi, 37, said he was sceptical that any real transition could take place in only two years and worried the electric vehicles would not provide the same earnings.
“I have heard that the e-rickshaws need charging a lot and can’t travel as far as we can on gas,” he said. “If I have to wait one or two hours every day for charging, that’s lost income for me that I can’t afford. I also don’t know how to maintain an e-rickshaw or stop the batteries getting stolen.”
However, he conceded that the city’s pollution was unbearable for rickshaw drivers forced to breathe in deadly fumes. “I am not against change and making the air clean, but I hope we are not the ones to pay the price,” said Gopi.
The policy also introduced significant road and vehicle tax exemptions for people buying new electric cars, in an attempt to incentivise drivers to switch over by choice. However, some critics expressed concern that two years was too short a window to phase out new petrol scooters and rickshaws and ensure there was enough consumer choice.
Imagine you're stopped at the lights and two cars pull up beside you. One is a compact SUV, the other a beefy four-wheel drive that weighs twice as much.
The off-roader has a petrol engine, while the SUV has the low idling growl of a diesel.
You'd probably guess the big car is polluting more.
And you're right, but also wrong.
The smaller car emits less carbon dioxide (CO2) but it also produces more of another form of car pollution — one that has a much greater immediate public health impact than the CO2.
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and nitric oxide (NO) are collectively known as the oxides of nitrogen, or "NOx".
Mostly invisible and regularly ignored, NOx is linked to hundreds of premature deaths each year from conditions such as heart and lung diseases.
Despite this health toll, drivers are generally unable to find out exactly how much NOx their car emits.
Now, new publicly available data is exposing which popular models pump out more NOx than others.
It comes as a long-anticipated standards update goes into force today that more than halves how much NOx new diesel models sold in Australia may emit.
Here's how these changes may affect your next car — and the air you breathe.
Unlike with CO2, you won't find a point-of-sale windshield sticker or a vehicle emissions guide that lists NOx pollution.
Cars sold in Australia must emit less NOx than mandated maximums, under rules last updated nine years ago.
These rules are enforced by laboratory testing of new models. Tyres are spun on a giant treadmill while exhaust gases are funnelled, split, and measured.
But lab-testing doesn't necessarily show how much cars pollute on the road.
The Australian Automobile Association (AAA) recently strapped emissions measurement systems onto more than 100 of the most popular cars, utes [pick-up trucks] and vans. They drove these modified vehicles around Geelong in real traffic conditions, following strict protocols for speed and acceleration.
Their testing revealed many cars consumed more fuel and emitted more pollution than lab tests showed.
And some of the biggest discrepancies were for NOx emissions.
The petrol cars were generally under the limit. Two of the 90 petrol cars tested emitted more NOx than the mandated maximum of 60 milligrams per kilometre.
But most of the diesel cars flunked the test.
Seventeen of the 24 diesels tested emitted more than the cut-off limit for commercial or passenger models, which is 280 milligrams per kilometre and 180mg/km respectively (two to three times higher than the limit for petrol cars).
On average, diesel vehicles exceeded their mandated maximums by almost 40 per cent [and remember, the emissions standard for commercial vehicles is 3 - 4 times higher than for petrol cars]
And this wasn't for a new emissions standard. The maximum had been in place since 2016.
Dots on a graph may not look too dangerous, but incremental changes in NOx emissions have a measurable impact on public health, when multiplied by the millions of cars.
If you stand beside a busy road and count the passing cars, about one in every 10 vehicles burn diesel.
Diesel vehicles are less common than petrol ones but emit far more NOx (based on the AAA's data, about 20 times more).
NOx exposure is associated with the majority of deaths from traffic pollution, so the relatively few diesel cars have a disproportionately high public health impact.
Research led by the University of Tasmania's Centre for Safe Air estimates particulate and NOx pollution from traffic leads to more than 1,800 earlier than expected deaths a year.
"Motor vehicles are one of the most important sources of air pollution in Australia," the Centre's director Fay Johnston said.
NO2 is a reddish-brownish gas with an acrid odour, while NO is colourless and odourless.
A near-invisible haze of NOx spreads outwards from highways and suburban streets. Levels drop at about 100 metres to 200m from the source, but remain high in busy traffic areas.
Breathed in, long-term exposure to NOx can damage the lungs and lead to diseases like bronchitis and asthma. It generally inflames and stresses cells in the body, which is linked with heart disease.
"We can measure the increased rates of deaths when NOx pollution is higher," Professor Johnston said.
Despite this high public health impact, Australia has delayed tightening vehicle NOx pollution regulations and is now about a decade behind Europe, the UK and the US.
The AAA's results show a 2024 Toyota LandCruiser Prado (GXL) diesel and a 2024 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport (GSR) diesel have very similar fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
But the Pajero's NOx emissions are about 17 times higher than the Land Cruiser's.
The reason for this is "after treatment", or the process of cleaning exhaust gases after they come out of the engine.
The most effective method is to inject a nitrogen-rich additive, like AdBlue, into the hot exhaust gases, which converts the NOx into nitrogen gas (N2), water (H2O) and CO2. This is known as selective catalytic reduction (SCR).
The 2022 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado uses SCR, while the 2024 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport does not.
SCR is so effective that it can make a diesel emit as much NOx as a petrol car — and even less than some petrol cars.
Essentially all diesels now sold in Europe use SCR to comply with emissions standards, Shawn Kook, director of the UNSW engine research laboratory, said.
Europe's had these standards since 2015.
"The technology and products are there," Professor Kook said.
"It is just that [adding this technology] will add costs to car makers."
AdBlue is stocked at petrol stations around Australia.(Getty: John Keeble)
CATL's new sodium-ion batteries have 5 advantages over lithium-ion:
Sodium-ion batteries used to have a much lower energy density than lithium-ion: 140 Watt-hours per kilogram vs lithium's +-200 Wh/kg. CATL's new sodium-ion batteries have an energy density of 175 Wh/kg. That's a higher energy density than BYD's lithium-ion blade battery, which has an energy density of 160 Wh/kg. But, here's the point: sodium is about 4.5 times cheaper than lithium, even after lithium's big decline in price over the last two years.
Sodium-ion batteries work much better in freezing temperatures, for example, at -20 to -40 degrees C, where lithium-ion batteries lose much of their performance, and even stop working at -40 C and below.
They can be very rapidly charged, even at low temperatures.
They should last for 10,000 recharge cycles, or about 4.8 million kilometres (3 million miles), vs the very best lithium-ion batteries, with maybe 3.5 million km.
Safety: sodium-ion batteries are much less inflammable than lithium-ion, and don't catch alight even if sawed or drilled into.
So, sodium-ion batteries are likely to rapidly replace lithium-ion batteries, with battery costs (my estimate) at least halving, a combined effect of longer life and cheaper materials.
This has huge implications for EV prices. Remember, outside the USA, EVs have already reached or are close to price parity. For example, in Australia, the cheapest BYD Dolphin has price parity with the cheapest all-petrol Toyota Corolla. CATL's new sodium-ion battery means that EVs will now achieve price parity with even the smallest and cheapest petrol cars, and better than that with all mid-size cars. Expect EV prices to continue to decline, even as range is increased.
It also has equally big implications for the grid. Battery storage costs will fall so much that 8 hours of storage will be almost as cheap as 4 hours is today. And, of course, this is not the end of the decline in battery prices. The pace of technological and manufacturing advance is breathtaking. This in turn means that every electricity grid within the sunbelt -- between 40 degrees N and S of the equator -- will find solar irresistibly cheap. And even grids which are only partially within the sunbelt will be heavily dependent on solar. Europe, for example, will combine North Sea wind with solar from Spain, Morocco, Italy and Turkey. This is the end of coal and baseload gas. High latitude locations will probably continue to need peaking gas, but these new super cheap batteries will outcompete gas peakers everywhere else.
The energy transition will accelerate. EVs will reach 100% of sales everywhere (except the USA) by 2030 or before. Oil demand will plunge. Coal power stations will stop being profitable, and will be closed. Emissions will start to fall. Air pollution will decline. Blood-soaked petro-states will lose their influence.
40% of global shipping moves fossil fuels ⛽🚢
Double trouble:
1. Profits from hauling coal, oil and fossil gas 🛢️🔥
2. Ships run on bunker fuel—the sludge of oil refining 🏭
Air pollution has dropped significantly in #Paris in the last 15 years. Mayor @annehidalgo.bsky.social’s leadership has traded car space for green space, safe bike space, kid space.. and traded pollution for people.
Scientists have uncovered how air pollution causes lung cancer in groundbreaking research that promises to rewrite our understanding of the disease.
The findings outline how fine particulates contained in car fumes “awaken” dormant mutations in lung cells and tip them into a cancerous state. The work helps explain why so many non-smokers develop lung cancer and is a “wake-up call” about the damaging impact of pollution on human health.
“The risk of lung cancer from air pollution is lower than from smoking, but we have no control over what we all breathe,” said Prof Charles Swanton of the Francis Crick Institute, who presented the findings at the European Society for Medical Oncology conference in Paris on Saturday.
“Globally, more people are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution than to toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke, and these new data link the importance of addressing climate health to improving human health.”
Smoking remains the biggest cause of lung cancer, but outdoor air pollution causes about one in 10 cases in the UK, and an estimated 6,000 people who have never smoked die of lung cancer every year. Globally, about 300,000 lung cancer deaths in 2019 were attributed to exposure to fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, contained in air pollution.
However, the biological basis for how air pollution causes cancer has remained unclear. Unlike smoking or sun exposure, which directly cause DNA mutations linked to lung and skin cancer, air pollution does not cause cancer by triggering such genetic changes.
Instead, those with non-smoking lung cancer tend to carry mutations that are also seen in healthy lung tissue – small errors that we accumulate in our DNA throughout life and which normally remain innocuous.
“Clearly these patients are getting cancer without having mutations, so there’s got to be something else going on,” said Swanton, who is also Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician. “Air pollution is associated with lung cancer but people have largely ignored it because the mechanisms behind it were unclear.”
The latest work unveils this mechanism through a series of meticulous experiments showing that cells carrying dormant mutations can turn cancerous when exposed to PM2.5 particles. The pollutant is the equivalent of the ignition spark on a gas hob.
In laboratory studies, Swanton’s team showed that mice that had been engineered to carry mutations in a gene called EGFR, linked to lung cancer, were far more likely to develop cancer when exposed to the pollutant particles. They also revealed that the risk is mediated by an inflammatory protein, called interleukin-1 beta (IL1B), released as part of the body’s immune response to PM2.5 exposure. When the mice were given drugs to block the protein, they were less vulnerable to the pollutants.
The work explains a previous incidental finding in a clinical trial of a heart disease drug, made by Novartis, that people on the drug – an IL1B-inhibitor – had a marked reduction in lung cancer incidence. This could pave the way for a new wave of cancer-preventing medicines, Swanton said.
The team also analysed samples of healthy lung tissue, taken during patient biopsies, and found that the EGFR mutation was found in one in five of the normal lung samples. This suggests that we all carry dormant mutations in our cells that have the potential to turn into cancer – and chronic exposure to air pollution increases the odds of that happening.
“It’s a wake-up call on the impact of pollution on human health,” said Swanton. “You cannot ignore climate health. If you want to address human health, you have to address climate health first.”
How about banning the sales of pure petrol/diesel cars? Hybrids would cut emissions by 40-50%, plug-in hybrids by 80% and EVs by 100%. Do we really care about the millions who die from burning fossil fuels, or not?
Deaths from fossil fuel burning and lead poisoning have risen by 66 percent in the past two decades
In 2015, 1 in 6 deaths worldwide stemmed from poor air quality, unsafe water and toxic chemical pollution. That deadly toll — 9 million people each year — has continued unabated through 2019, killing more people than war, terrorism, road injuries, malaria, drugs and alcohol.
The new findings, released Tuesday by the Lancet Planetary Health journal,shows that pollution continues to be the world’s largest environmental health threat for disease and premature deaths, with more the 90 percent of these deaths taking place in low- and middle-income countries.
Richard Fuller, the report’s lead author, said in an interview that “a lack of attention” accounts for why this grim tally continues unabated.
“There’s not much of an outcry around pollution … even though, clearly, 9 million people dying a year is an enormous issue to be concerned about,” he said.
The analysis, which used 2019 data from Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors, found that air pollution accounts for the vast majority of premature deaths, at 6.7 million. Water pollution accounted for 1.4 million deaths, while lead poisoning took close to a million lives. The report is an update of a similar analysis done by Fuller and his colleagues in 2015, which also found air and water pollution as the top offenders.
While the total number of pollution-related deaths has not changed in the past five years, the sources have shifted in some regions. In the past, most pollution deaths stemmed from indoor and household air pollution, caused by fine particles of soot released from indoor stoves burning wood or dung. Unclean water and untreated sewage also took more than a million lives.
Fuller said this source of pollution has decreased in recent years, as many households in China and India have switched to gas for cooking.
But that was about the only good news in the report. Instead of those traditional pollutants, fossil fuel burning, automobile combustion and toxic chemical pollution now pose a greater health risk in the developing world.
More than half of the countries and nations worldwide experienced more deaths from outdoor air pollution and toxic chemicals in 2019 than indoor air pollution and water contamination. More than 2 million people died from industrial and chemical pollution in China, for example, compared with about 367,000 from traditional sources.
In Africa, traditional pollutants still rank as the main cause of pollution-related disease and death, although industrial pollution is on the rise.
“When we’re seeing this increase in industrialization, we’re seeing increased urbanization, more people living in cities, and an aging population who are more vulnerable to the health impacts of air pollution,” said Neelu Tummala, a physician and co-director of the Climate Health Institute at George Washington University who was not involved in the study. “All of this sort of combined together just really increases the amount of associated mortality.”
A boy disposes of raw sewage into a stream in the sprawling Kibera slum in Nairobi on Aug. 26, 2011. (Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)
Greenpeace Australia has updated their guide to green electricity providers. The last one was done in 2018. Then, as now, Diamond Energy and Enova (a community electricity co-op) top the list. At the bottom of the list are the big electricity utilities, producing most of their electricity from black, or, even worse, brown coal. Here's the scoring card for the lowest ranked utility, AGL, which spends a lot of advertising money on images with wind and solar farms trying to make itself appear green when it really, really isn't. 35% of Oz's emissions come from electricity generation. You can make your own significant personal contribution to reducing emissions by switching to one of the suppliers on the top of Greenpeace's list.
Switching to electric delivery trucks rather than diesel-powered ones could mean cutting noise, congestion and pollution on suburban and city streets as freight curfews are lifted, with the trucking industry backing an energy switch that it says will save companies money.
Internal combustion engines are louder, pollute more and have higher running costs, while quiet electric engines could power trucks for nighttime deliveries around urban areas, avoiding the curfews many councils currently place on diesel trucks, reducing traffic congestion.
The Australian Trucking Association (ATA) has produced a report with the Electric Vehicle Council advocating a switch to electric vehicles to reduce health impacts and save the industry money.
“It costs about $117 to fuel a diesel truck for 300 kilometres, but just $18 for an electric truck,” ATA chairman David Smith said.
“If Australia gets left behind on the transition to electric and zero emission trucks, we risk our supply chains and exporters getting stuck with high, globally uncompetitive per kilometre freight costs.”
Experts attribute more than 1500 deaths a year to respiratory illnesses from air pollution due to emissions from cars and trucks. Road freight in capital cities and urban centres creates up to 40 per cent of total road freight.
The ATA’s report called for incentive payments for charging infrastructure at depots and public roads, incentives for new purchases of electric trucks, making electric and zero-emission trucks exempt from stamp duty, and setting a sales target for zero-emission trucks of 30 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2040.
Daimler manufactures Fuso electric trucks, and chief executive of the Australian branch of the company Daniel Whitehead said it was “investing massively in zero emissions technology for our Fuso, Freightliner and Mercedes-Benz brands”.
“We believe battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell solutions have a huge role to play in Australia’s freight future and will deliver major benefits to our customers and the community,” Mr Whitehead said.
The ATA’s report, Electric trucks: Keeping shelves stocked in a net zero world, said there are vehicle models available today that could be deployed into existing urban fleet operations. The association is aiming for 100 per cent of new truck sales to be electric by 2040.
It calls for the government to support the industry financially, and to change vehicle standards so new models designed for major markets in Europe and North America are deemed roadworthy in Australia.
Volvo Group is planning to build electric trucks in Brisbane by 2025 and Australia vice president Paul Illmer said traffic and health benefits were key market opportunities for the company.
“Electromobility has the potential to transform the way our cities operate,” Mr Illmer said.
“You can make deliveries at night without disturbing local residents, which could also reduce traffic congestion during the day. The impact of diesel fumes on the general public is also reduced, making our cities healthier places to be.”
The Fuso eCanter light duty delivery truck. The manufacturer says its quiet and clean engine makes it well suited to urban deliveries. CREDIT:JASON SOUTH.
Air pollution can reduce the life expectancy of Indians by nine years, says a report by a US research group.
The study says 480 million people in northern India face the "most extreme levels of air pollution in the world" and, over time, these high levels have expanded to cover other parts too.
Strong clean air policies can add up to five years to people's lives, it adds.
Indian cities routinely dominate global pollution rankings and bad air kills more than a million people every year.
The report by The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) says that north India breathes "pollution levels that are 10 times worse than those found anywhere else in the world".
This air pollution has spread over decades beyond the region to western and central Indian states such as Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh where the average person is now losing between two and a half-to-three years of life expectancy as compared to early 2000, it adds.
New data from the Air Quality Life Index report by EPIC says that residents in the capital, Delhi, could see up to 10 years added to their lives if air pollution was reduced to meet the World Health Organisation (WHO) guideline of 10 µg/m³.
In 2019, India's average particulate matter concentration was 70.3 µg/m³ - the highest in the world.
The report says that Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan, which together account for nearly a quarter of the global population, consistently figure in the top five most polluted countries on earth.
EPIC acknowledges certain policy changes made by the Indian government to fight air pollution, such as the 2019 National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), which aims to reduce dangerous particulate pollution in the country.
"Achieving these goals would have a major impact on the life expectancy levels of Indians - it would increase the national life expectancy level by nearly two years, and three-and-a-half years for residents of Delhi," it says.
China, the report says, is one example of how effective policy can produce "sharp reductions in pollution in short order". Since 2013, the country has reduced its particulate production by 29%.
Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increased severity of mental illness, according to the most comprehensive study of its kind.
The research, involving 13,000 people in London, found that a relatively small increase in exposure to nitrogen dioxide led to a 32% increase in the risk of needing community-based treatment and an 18% increase in the risk of being admitted to hospital.
The researchers said the findings were likely to apply to most cities in developed nations, and cutting air pollution could benefit millions of people.
The study used the frequency of admission to hospital or visits to community doctors and nurses as a measure of severity. The researchers calculated that a small reduction in one pollutant alone could reduce illness and save the NHS tens of millions a year.
Levels of air pollution in London have fallen in recent years but there is no safe level, said Ioannis Bakolis, of King’s College London, who was part of the research team. “Even at low levels of air pollution, you can observe this kind of very important effect.”
The new study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, tracked patients in south London from their first contact with mental health services and used high-resolution estimates of air pollution at their homes.
The quarterly average NO2 levels in the study area varied by between 18 and 96 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m³). The researchers found that people exposed to 15µg/m³ higher levels of pollution had an 18% higher risk of being admitted to hospital and a 32% higher risk of needing outpatient treatment after a year.
The link was strongest for NO2, which is largely emitted by diesel vehicles, but was also significant for small particle pollution, which is produced by burning all fossil fuels. The small particle levels varied from 9 to 25 µg/m³ and an increased exposure of 3 units increased hospital admission risk by 11% and outpatient treatment risk by 7%.
The scientists assessed the patient data again seven years after the first treatment and found the link to air pollution was still apparent. The findings were not explained by a range of possible other factors including age, sex, ethnicity, deprivation or population density, although unidentified factors might still play an important role.
“Identifying modifiable risk factors for illness severity and relapse could inform early intervention efforts and reduce the human suffering and high economic costs caused by long-term chronic mental illness,” the researchers said.
The study was not designed to prove a causal link between air pollution and the severity of mental illness – that requires difficult experimental work. But the link is “biologically plausible”, the researchers said, as air pollutants are known to have potent inflammatory properties and inflammation is believed to be a factor in psychotic and mood disorders.
The World Bank has estimated that air pollution costs the global economy $5tn a year, but this includes only the well-known damage caused to heart and lungs.
“Cost evaluations currently only factor in physical health, but we’re seeing more studies demonstrating links with mental health,” said Newbury. “We think it can be important to include these, because it could tip the scales and make it clearer that investing in reducing air pollution is cost-effective.”
The researchers estimated that reducing the exposure of the UK’s urban population to small particle pollution alone by just a few units, to the World Health Organization’s annual limit of 10µg/m³, would cut the use of mental health services by about 2% and save tens of millions of pounds each year.
Prof Kevin McConway of the Open University, who was not part of the study team, said: “This is a good study. The statistical analysis is generally appropriate [and] does increase confidence that there’s at least some element of cause and effect in the association between pollution and mental health.
“But it’s not easy for people to avoid pollution. Reducing air pollution in cities needs communal action on a broad scale.”
A separate new study has shown that heart attacks rise as the level of air pollution rises. The research examined data from southern Lombardy in Italy, an area with 1.5 million inhabitants.
Francesca Gentile, of the IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo Foundation in Pavia, said: “The results could be used to predict the incidence of this life-threatening condition [and] improve health service efficiency by being factored into ambulance forecasting models and warning systems.” The study was presented at the European Society of Cardiology 2021 congress.
We all know what the solution to air pollution is. It's the rapid transition of land transport to EVs and of electricity generation to renewables. It's that simple. Why aren't governments acting?
A heatwave in one of the world’s coldest regions has sparked forest fires and threatened the Siberian city of Yakutsk with an “airpocalypse” of thick toxic smoke, atmospheric monitoring services have reported.
High levels of particulate matter and possibly also chemicals including ozone, benzene and hydrogen cyanide are thought likely to make this one of the world’s worst ever air pollution events.
Local authorities have warned the 320,000 residents to stay indoors to avoid choking fumes from the blazes, which are on course to break last year’s record.
Satellite analysts say regional levels of PM2.5 – small particles that can enter the bloodstream and damage human organs – have surged beyond 1,000 micrograms a cubic metre in recent days, which is more than 40 times the recommended safe guideline of the World Health Organization.
On Tuesday, live air quality monitors for Yakutsk measured PM 2.5 levels of 395 micrograms. This fell into the extreme category of “airpocalypse”, which is defined as “immediate and heavy effects on everybody”. Russian social media accounts have shown images of readings that are more than 17 times worse than the average in even the most polluted cities of India and China.
Scientists see human-caused climate disruption as an important factor. Yakutsk, the capital of Russia’s north-east Sakha Republic – also known as Yakutia – is the coldest winter city on the planet, but due to global heating, summer temperatures here have been rising at least 2.5 times faster than the world average.
Last year, during an unusually prolonged heatwave in the wider Siberian region temperatures remained more than 5C above average from January to June, causing permafrost to melt, buildings to collapse, and sparking an unusually early and intense start to the forest fires season. Scientists said this was made 600 times more likely by exhaust fumes, industrial emissions, deforestation and other human activities.
The record-breaking trend resumed this spring, earlier than usual and slightly further south than last year, near more populated areas such as Yakutsk. Much of the surrounding area is dense taiga forest, which ignites more easily when hot and dry.
The Siberian Times reported the first fire in the beginning of May outside Oymyakon in north-east Yakutia, which is known as “the pole of cold” for its record low temperatures. As the blazes widened, more than 2,000 firefighters were deployed across the region and drafted in from outside.
The forest smoke contains more toxins than even the most polluted urban centres. Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at Copernicus, said analysis of atmospheric aerosols from Sakha’s fires suggested surface levels of PM2.5 levels above 1,000 micrograms a cubic metre of air, in addition to other potential constituents such as ozone, ammonia, benzene, hydrogen cyanide and organic aerosols. By comparison, the annual average in famously smoggy cities like Beijing, Hotan, New Delhi and Ghaziabad is between 100 and 110.
Parrington said climate change was helping to create the conditions for more fires in northern boreal forests in Siberia, Canada, and northern Europe – all of which are heating faster than the global average. This is in keeping with a broader global trend of fires moving from grasslands to fuel-rich forests, which emit more carbon.
Alexey Yaroshenko, head of the forest department in Greenpeace Russia, said poor forest management, weak regulation and budget cuts had compounded the fire risks. “For many years, propaganda has made people think that the climate crisis is a fiction, and if not fiction, that it will only benefit Russia, since it will become warmer and more comfortable. Now the situation is starting to change,” he wrote in an email.
“Little by little, people are beginning to understand that the climate is really changing, and the consequences are really catastrophic. But the majority of society and the majority of politicians are still very far from understanding the real scale of the problem.”
More than 8 million people are estimated to have died from fossil fuel pollution in 2018 – almost double previous estimates – with new research linking it to about one in five deaths worldwide.
Researchers from Harvard University in collaboration with the University of Birmingham and others, found the highest death rate from fossil fuel pollution in China and India. Their study has been published in the journal Environmental Research.
But every country suffers from its impact. In Australia, it represents about 4 per cent of all deaths each year, or about 5700 fatalities.
In China, a quarter of all deaths were caused by fossil fuel pollution (representing 2.3 million people), rising to 30 per cent in India and 35 per cent in Bangladesh – the highest percentage in the study.
For decades scientists have known airborne particles are a danger to public health, but there have been few epidemiological studies to quantify the effects of very high levels of exposure like in India and China.
For this study, researchers intentionally chose to use data from 2012, when the El Nino weather pattern was in a “neutral” phase, and did not affect air pollution levels at the time. If data from another year was used, they said, the estimates of mortality might have been higher or lower.
But the researchers updated the China data for 2018, because of the large cut in fossil fuel pollution in that country after 2012.
The study greatly increases the estimate of numbers killed by air pollution. In comparison, the most recent Global Burden of Disease study, the most comprehensive study on the causes of global mortality, put the total number of deaths for airborne pollution – including from dust, smoke and agricultural burns – at 4.2 million a year.
"Just" 5700 deaths in Australia. Imagine if a terrorist had killed 5700 people, what drama would ensue! But pollution? Nah.
More than 10 million people die each year from air pollution, according to a new study — far more than the estimated 2.6 million people who have died from Covid-19 since it was detected more than a year ago. And while Covid is headline news, ordinary air pollution remains a side issue for policy wonks and technocrats.
You might wonder whether the estimate of 10.2 million excess deaths from pollution is accurate. The study, which specifically examines global mortality from particulate matter generated by the combustion of fossil fuels, does deploy some complex measurement techniques. Still, if you believe that smoking is bad for people and sometimes kills them — a well-established fact — it stands to reason that air pollution is also bad.
I have been a frequent visitor to China and India over the years, and it was not unusual for the air pollution to be so terrible that I wanted to stay in my hotel room all day. As a relatively well-to-do visitor, I had this luxury — but many of the city’s residents do not. When they go outside, the air damages their respiratory and circulatory systems, shortening their lives.
The 10.2 million estimate draws upon 2012 data, and since 2012 China has cut its emissions considerably. Yet many other countries have seen more economic growth and more pollution over that time, so the inaccuracies from the limited data can cut in both directions.
If you are still skeptical, note that earlier World Health Organization estimates for annual deaths from air pollution typically range between 6 million and 7 million. To repeat: That is per year.
Why aren’t these deaths a bigger issue in U.S. political and policy discourse? One reason may be that 62% of those deaths are in China and India. The number of premature deaths due to particulate matter in North America was 483,000, just slightly lower than the number of measured deaths from Covid to date. An estimated 876 of those deaths were of children under the age of 4.
Another reason for the weak political salience of the issue may be its invisibility. Air pollution causes many deaths. But it is rare to see or read about a person dying directly from air pollution. Lung cancer and cardiac disease are frequently cited as causes of death, even though they may stem from air pollution.
Another problem is that the question of how to better fight air pollution does not fit neatly into current ideological battles. You might think Democrats would emphasize this issue, but much of the economic burden of tougher action would fall on the Northeast, a largely Democratic-leaning area.
Or you might ask why there isn’t more focus on how many people die each year from global warming, either directly or indirectly. It is difficult to find an accurate estimate of that number, although it is almost certainly nowhere close to 10 million.
Talking more about air pollution also might distract from the larger fight against climate change, which seems to be a more salient issue for many intellectuals and activists. They may also think, perhaps correctly, that if they succeed in limiting climate change, air pollution will significantly decrease.
Still, the truth-teller in me is not quite happy with those explanations. If something is killing 10 million people a year, or even close to that, that phenomenon should be the main focus of debate. Is it so unreasonable to expect a nation’s politics and culture to have an explicit obsession with its biggest problems?
