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Illegal crop burning in farm states surrounding New Delhi,
vehicle exhaust in a city with limited public transport and
swirling construction dust have caused the crisis, as they do
year after year. (Graphic: Comparing New Delhi with Beijing -
http://tmsnrt.rs/2fihRRX)
“Sprinkling water is the only way to bring down the dangerous
pollution levels,” said Shruti Bhardwaj, the environment
ministry's senior most official in charge of monitoring air
quality.
The government was finalizing the plans to spray the water from
a height of 100 meters, which would be unprecedented, she said,
without saying how much of the city of 22 million people would
be covered.
The thick blanket of gray air and pollutants has enveloped Delhi
for the past four days. A U.S. embassy measure of tiny
particulate matter, called PM 2.5, showed a reading of 523 at 9
a.m. on Friday - the outer limit of "good" air is 50.
PM 2.5 is about 30 times finer than a human hair. The particles
can be inhaled deep into the lungs, causing heart attacks,
strokes, lung cancer and respiratory diseases.
The air has remained consistently in the "hazardous" category or
beyond those levels, despite a litany of government measures:
ordering a halt to all construction activities, restricting
vehicular movement and raising parking charges four times to
push residents to use public transport.
Commercial trucks are now banned from the city unless they are
transporting essential commodities and the Delhi transport
department said it re-introduced an “odd-even” scheme under
which cars with license plates ending in an odd number are
allowed one day and even-numbered cars the next day.
The scheme was introduced in the Chinese capital a decade ago to
fight traffic and pollution with mixed success.
The Delhi high court issued an order on Thursday suggesting the
city's government consider "cloud seeding" to induce rainfall
artificially, a practice also used in Beijing.
Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director of the Center for
Science and Environment in New Delhi, said sprinkling water will
help, but it won't solve everything.
"Each and every dust control measure has to be put in place to
ensure that air quality improves as soon as possible," she said.
Satyendra Kumar Jain, New Delhi’s health minister, said laborers
living in urban slums or beneath road fly-overs were suffering
the most. Government hospitals in the city, Jain said, were
treating thousands of patients with respiratory ailments.
"The only solution left is that we start spraying water right at
the street level, especially along heavy traffic roads," Jain
said.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of Delhi, called the
capital a "gas chamber" earlier this week as his government
sought urgent meetings with the federal government and
neighboring states to find solutions.
Affluent residents and large private companies have been placing
bulk orders for air purifiers and filtration masks.
"I have installed six air purifiers in my home, closed all the
windows, but my eyes are still watering," said Ranveer Singhal,
a commodity trader living in leafy neighborhood of the city.
According to a 2016 World Bank report, nearly 1.4 million people
died in India due to air pollution in 2013, causing an economic
loss worth 7.7 percent of the nation's GDP.
Organizers of music festivals and open air parties are now
cancelling events after the Central Pollution Control Board said
air quality could deteriorate further during the weekend.
Pronab Sarkar, president of the Indian Association of Tour
Operators, said air pollution had also hit tourism.
“Many tourists are cancelling their bookings for Christmas
holiday,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Manoj Kumar, Writing by Rupam Jain,
Editing by Tom Lasseter and Nick Macfie)
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