The WHO has raised the bar on air pollution, and India needs to catch up
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WHO's new Air Pollution guidelines (after 16 years!)
- The story: The World Health Organisation said various harms from air pollution begin at much lower levels than previously thought. It has now lowered acceptable thresholds for several pollutants, including ultrafine PM2.5 particles, that India has struggled to contain.
- NCAP of India: India released its National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) in January 2019. It does not have a legal mandate but aims to achieve a 20% to 30% reduction in PM 2.5 concentrations over 2017 annual levels in over a hundred cities by 2024. There are 132 cities in India that do not meet the national air quality standard for particulate matter according to data with the environment ministry.
- WHO's new norms: According to the new thresholds, the average 24-hour exposure to PM2.5 must remain below 15µg/m³, down from 25µg/m³. In case of PM10 particles – typical dust particles – the safe threshold has been lowered from 50 to 45µg/m³. In terms of exposure over a year-long period, the threshold for PM2.5 has been brought down from 10 to 5µg/m³ and for PM10, from 20 to 15µg/m³.
- In comparison, India’s thresholds are many folds higher. According to the 2009 National Ambient Air Quality Standards still in force, the acceptable PM2.5 exposure limit over 24 hours is 60µg/m³ (four times the new WHO limit) and for exposure over a year-long period, 40µg/m³ (eight times the revised WHO threshold)
- Since 2005 when WHO last set air pollutant thresholds, it said that new evidence has accumulated, demonstrating the degree to which air pollution affects all parts of the body from the brain to a growing baby in a mother’s womb at even lower concentrations than previously observed. The WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has taken lead in the new development.
- A team from across the world conducted a meta-analysis of over 500 epidemiological studies available on health impact of air pollution to revise the WHO guidelines. For the first time, studies from India and South Asia were also included.
- Observation: He said air pollution was a threat to health in all countries, but it hits people in low- and middle-income countries the hardest. He urged governments and experts to make use of the new yardsticks in their fight against air pollution. Indian officials said they will study the WHO’s new guidance for further steps, and there were no plans to revise the national air quality standards immediately.
- Disease burden: The new WHO guidance estimates that exposure to even lower concentrations of ambient and household air pollution can cause diseases including lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, resulting in 7 million premature deaths each year. This puts the burden of disease attributable to air pollution on a par with other major global health risks such as unhealthy diet and tobacco smoking. The guidelines give interim targets for countries to pursue to meet the WHO guideline. For PM 2.5 the first annual interim target is 35µg/m³ followed by 25, 15 and 10 µg/m³.
- India's disease burden: The health burden of air pollution in India is massive. Over 1 million premature deaths are linked to air pollution. The interim targets that there is benefit even in achieving 35µg/m³ annually. India's annual standard is 40µg/m³. Cities or regions that first meet the national standard can look at meeting the interim targets and WHO guideline. The Central Pollution Control Board’s National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP) data indicates that the annual average PM2.5 levels in Delhi last year ranged from 114-145µg/m³ in three stations considered by CPCB. Thus, Delhi’s PM2.5 pollution was at least 22 times higher than the new WHO guideline in 2020. The NAMP data also indicates large parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plains region, including several cities in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Punjab, Haryana, had very high concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10.
- Dying: Despite some improvements in air quality, the global toll in deaths and lost years of healthy life has barely declined since the 1990s. While air quality has markedly improved in high-income countries over this period, it has generally deteriorated in most low- and middle-income countries, in step with large-scale urbanization and economic development, the executive summary of WHO Air Quality Guidelines 2021 said. These guidelines are not legally binding on countries, but are meant to provide guidance to help reduce levels of air pollution in order to decrease the health burden. The WHO Air Quality Guidelines were last updated in 2005, and since then, the body of evidence on the health effects of air pollution has grown substantially.
- Allotments: India released its National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) in January 2019. NCAP does not have a legal mandate but aims to achieve a 20% to 30% reduction in PM 2.5 concentrations over 2017 annual levels in over a hundred cities by 2024. So far, Rs.375.44 crore have been released to 114 cities during FY 2019-20 and 2020-21 for initiating actions under city action plans to control air pollution. Further, Rs.4,400 crore has been released to 42 cities with million plus population as per recommendations of the 15th Finance Commission report for FY 2020-21.
- EXAM QUESTIONS: (1) Explain the need for a new air pollution standard from the WHO. What will change due to it? Explain. (2) The vast damage that air pollution does to Indians' health is grossly under-appreciated by Indians. Why?
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- AIR POLLUTION FACTS
- (1) Air pollution is one of the greatest environmental risk to health. By reducing air pollution levels, countries can reduce the burden of disease from stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and both chronic and acute respiratory diseases, including asthma.
(2) The lower the levels of air pollution, the better the cardiovascular and respiratory health of the population will be, both long- and short-term.
(3) The WHO Air Quality Guidelines: Global Update 2005 provide an assessment of health effects of air pollution and thresholds for health–harmful pollution levels
(4) In 2019, 99% of the world population was living in places where the WHO air quality guidelines levels were not met.
(5) Ambient (outdoor air pollution) in both cities and rural areas was estimated to cause 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide in 2016.
(6) Some 91% of those premature deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries, and the greatest number in the WHO South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions.
(7) Policies and investments supporting cleaner transport, energy-efficient homes, power generation, industry and better municipal waste management would reduce key sources of outdoor air pollution.
(8) In addition to outdoor air pollution, indoor smoke is a serious health risk for some 3 billion people who cook and heat their homes with biomass, kerosene fuels and coal.
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- SUCCESSFUL POLICIES
- There are many examples of successful policies in transport, urban planning, power generation and industry that reduce air pollution:
for industry: clean technologies that reduce industrial smokestack emissions; improved management of urban and agricultural waste, including capture of methane gas emitted from waste sites as an alternative to incineration (for use as biogas);
for energy: ensuring access to affordable clean household energy solutions for cooking, heating and lighting;
for transport: shifting to clean modes of power generation; prioritizing rapid urban transit, walking and cycling networks in cities as well as rail interurban freight and passenger travel; shifting to cleaner heavy-duty diesel vehicles and low-emissions vehicles and fuels, including fuels with reduced sulfur content;
for urban planning: improving the energy efficiency of buildings and making cities more green and compact, and thus energy efficient;
for power generation: increased use of low-emissions fuels and renewable combustion-free power sources (like solar, wind or hydropower); co-generation of heat and power; and distributed energy generation (e.g. mini-grids and rooftop solar power generation);
for municipal and agricultural waste management: strategies for waste reduction, waste separation, recycling and reuse or waste reprocessing; as well as improved methods of biological waste management such as anaerobic waste digestion to produce biogas, are feasible, low cost alternatives to the open incineration of solid waste. Where incineration is unavoidable, then combustion technologies with strict emission controls are critical.
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