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One person dies every hour due to air pollution in Delhi

One person dies every hour due to air pollution in Delhi, which has acquired the dubious distinction of being the worst polluted city in the world.

Professor H P Garg, physicist and India chapter president of the Trieste-based International Centre for Theoretical Physics, revealed this startling fact while addressing a three-day Indo-Italian workshop on 'advanced technology for environment' in Hyderabad on Thursday. Professor Garg said an estimated 51,779 Indians die every year because of air pollution.

He said over 3,000 metric tonnes of air pollutants were emitted in Delhi daily. The atmospheric concentration of sulphur dioxide in the national capital was 109 per cent more in 1996 than what it was in 1989 and nitrogen concentration 82 per cent more.

Pollution testing instruments failed to measure the pollution levels in certain areas of Delhi as they were beyond the inbuilt measuring scales, he added.

The noise levels in many areas of Delhi far exceed the prescribed standards, and a mere 15 of the 46 residential localities had noise levels within tolerable limits for over 90 per cent of the time in a day. Twelve locations were noisy round-the-clock.

Professor Garg said noise-induced ailments had registered a sharp rise over the years in the metropolis. High noise levels resulted in auditory fatigue and deafness.

Delhi, with no mass transit system, has more vehicles than Calcutta, Bombay and Madras put together. Vehicular population in Delhi has increased from 235,000 in 1973 to 2.62 million in 1996.

He said vehicular pollution was responsible for almost 67 per cent of the total air pollution load in the national capital. The incidence of respiratory diseases in Delhi was 12 times higher than elsewhere in the country, though doctors in Calcutta had also found an alarming increase in the number of cancer cases because of bad air quality.

Professor Garg said many of the environmental pollution problems could be solved with available technology, but unfortunately the efforts being made were badly managed and inadequate in India.

UNI

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