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Close your eyes. Well, imagine that you have closed them, ok? Now create this image in your mind. Its a simmering summer day in Delhi, and you are crossing one of the city’s busiest traffic junctions. You are in a hurry and panting hard as you rush along. Then you pause for a moment to take a deep breath. HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! You cant do that! Chances are you will break into fits of cough, may even develop a chest pain and be laid up for the next couple of days with a severe congestion. Why? Well, you have just breathed in a lungful of ozone, a gas known to be ‘extremely hazardous for human health’. In fact, you have sucked in a deadly cocktail of poisonous gases, made up of nitrogen oxides (NO), carbon monoxide (CO),benzene, a range of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and a variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). And as a side order, you have inhaled huge quantities of ultrafine particles that may have already entered your lung and caused serious injuries. They have probably flown into your bloodstream by now and are moving ominously towards your heart. No you are not living a nightmare, or watching a bad horror movie. All this can actually happen if you just breathe in too deeply, or too often in the streets of Delhi, or Kolkata, or Raipur, or Kanpur, or any other metro or small town you live in. If you are in India. But this is not news to you, or any Indian citizen, is it? We already know that our cities are caught in a toxic web. And that the air quality in all urban centres fails to meet the global health-based standards. Some of us are even aware that newer pollutants like nitrogen, ozone and other air toxics have begun to add to the public health challenge. In other words, in the current situation, every time we breathe we run the risk of falling sick. |
