Residents of India’s capital New Delhi choked in a blanketing toxic smog Wednesday as worsening air pollution surged past 50 times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum.
Many in the city cannot afford air filters, nor do they have homes they can effectively seal from the misery of foul smelling air blamed for thousands of premature deaths.
At dawn on Wednesday, “hazardous” pollutant levels in parts of the sprawling urban area of more than 30 million people topped 806 micrograms per cubic meter, according to monitoring firm IQAir.
That is more than 53 times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum of fine particulate matter—dangerous cancer-causing microparticles known as PM2.5 pollutants that enter the bloodstream through the lungs.
By midday, when air usually is at its best, it eased to about 25-35 times above danger levels, depending on different districts.
The New York Times this month, based on air and soil samples it collected over five years, revealed the dangerous fumes also spewing from a power plant incinerating the city’s landfill garbage mountains.
Experts the newspaper spoke to said that the levels of heavy metals found were “alarming”.
A study in The Lancet medical journal attributed 1.67 million premature deaths to air pollution in the world’s most populous country in 2019.