by Nichole Frazier

Seven million a year dead. Nine in ten people affected. The future is dim. It sounds like the news’s anchor line to an oncoming plague. The catch? It is already here. It is in the air you breathe. The second catch? It isn’t a disease – it is a poison. Every day the poison’s pool grows bigger and its reach further. What is it, this poison that tinges our fate to such a doomed shade? Centuries of chemicals built up in the very air you breathe. Air pollution – Ozone. Carbon monoxide. Sulfur oxides. Nitrogen oxides. Lead. Particulate matter. All toxic to humans. All harmful to the animals, plants, and millions of other things that live alongside us.

November 7, 2018, and New Delhi – the capital of India and home to all three of the branches of their government – is kicking off their celebration of Diwali – the Hindu festival of lights. Levels of air pollution were high at the start of the day – twenty times higher than the deemed safe level. As such – along with the fact New Delhi had been suffering from extreme air pollution for the past year – the Supreme Court ordered a limit on firecrackers that deemed they could be set off from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. the one day and the firecrackers had to be less polluting than the typical one. But many ignored the rules. The air pollution rate shot up from twenty times the safety-level to 68.1.

“I have been driving an auto rickshaw since 1994, for twenty-four or twenty-five years, and it has been very difficult due to the high pollution. Sometimes when we clean our nose, it’s all black. When we spit or cough, that’s all black. This is a problem,” Rias Ahmed shared with Time magazine in an interview, claiming that it was unlikely that the levels of air pollutions would decrease in or around the capital of India.

“It was very noisy, and on top of that the pollution level was so high,” Mohammad Shahid Raza, a student, claimed that people in his neighborhood until nearly 1 a.m. on Thursday, “that when I went outside my house to buy some water, I could see dark clouds, and everything was completely dark. This is not good.”

It wasn’t only the firecrackers that attributed to the smog, the government claims, but the burning in agricultural fields. As farmers prepare their fields in earlier November, they practice crop burning. By doing so they ignore the government warnings of a penalty under the reason that they couldn’t afford the required harvesting machines.

The government reacted by attempting to reduce the dust through various methods. Sprinkling water around neighborhoods. Covering construction sites. Shutting down coal-based power stations in the capital region. The transportation department began checking buses entering the are for valid emission papers. They banned diesel vehicles over ten years old. They banned diesel-run trucks into New Delhi from the 8th to the 10th to attempt to control air pollutant levels. Only trucks carrying food supplies were allowed in.

The Central Pollution Control Board, a government organization in charge of monitoring and controlling air quality throughout India, is considering cloud seeding (a type of weather modification that functions to change the amounts or types of precipitation from the clouds by placing substances – salts, calcium chloride, dry ice, silver iodide, etc – that serves as condensation or ice nuclei that alter the processes of the clouds) to induce rain into the air to help clear the pollutants if it isn’t clearer by the end of the next week.

 

Air quality – or the degree to with the air is pollution free – is measured in an international standard of the Air Quality Index or the AQI. The air is rated on a scale of zero to five hundred and broken down into six smaller categories defended by numerical ranges. Zero to fifty is labeled with a green color and marks “good” quality air; breathing this is going to cause little to no trouble at all. Fifty-one to one hundred are a yellow color and makes that the air is “moderate”; breathing this is acceptable, however, a very small number of people who are highly sensitive might be affected. 101 to 150 is marked in orange and “unhealthy for sensitive groups”; breathing this air might cause some health issues to small children, the elderly, and those with lung and heart diseases, 151 to 200 is red and dubbed “Unhealthy”; breathing this air is when the average population starts to show adverse health effects and those who are sensitive might start to experience serious effects. 201 to 300 is purple and “very unhealthy”; breathing this air is when everyone may experience more serious effects. 301 to 500 is maroon and “hazardous”; breathing this air is a marker of emergency conditions and the entire population is most likely affected.

If we look at New Delhi’s reading during the recent smog, hourly readings were taken November 7th through the 10th, with a peak of over 1010 at 4 pm on November 9th. Readings stayed consistently in the hazardous category through November 14th. As of Wednesday, at 10 am in New Delhi’s time, it is at 170 though the exact number fluctuates depending on where in the city you are with points as low as 142 and as high as 328. In Pakistan, on November 8th a peak reading was made at 1077. An AQI of over 250 for longer than a twenty-four-hour period is a guideline by the World Health Organization standards for declaring an air pollution emergency. Those numbers are over three times higher than what is marked “hazardous”.

 

What makes smog so dangerous? What is typically thought of as air pollution is actually a mixture of small particles:

• Particulate matter – written as PM10 or PM2.5 – is small airborne particles like dust, soot, and liquids and the majority is sourced from the burning of fossil fuels. The particles can affect the heart and lungs and cause heart attacks, strokes, asthma, and bronchitis as well as premature death from heart issues, cancer, and lung disease as well as impair brain development in children.
• Black carbon (BC) is collected from the burning of fuels such as diesel, wood, and coal. Exposure to high quantities to black carbon can lead to heart attack, stroke, hypertension, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bronchitis, and various cancers.
• Nitrogen oxide (NO) and Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are produced primarily by transportation and found in higher concentrations around roads. Nitrogen oxides can cause asthma, bronchitis, and heart disease.
• Ozone (O3), which is used in the atmosphere to protect from UV radiation, on ground level is caused by reactions from volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides from the combustion of fossil fuels. Short-term exposure leads to chest pain, coughing, throat irritation and long-term results in decreased lung function and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease along with worsening preexisting conditions.
• Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Coal, metal extraction and smelting, ship engines, and heavy equipment with diesel engines burn fossil fuels with SO2 content. It causes eye irritations, asthma, increases susceptibility to respiratory infections, impacts the cardiovascular system, and when combined with water, forms sulfuric acid(a main component of acid rain).

All and all, smog results in roughly 6.4 million (one out of every nine deaths) a year. A number a staggering three times as high as the number of deaths from AIDS, Malaria, and tuberculosis combined. The World Health Organization estimates that two billion children living in areas where the outdoor air quality exceeds the international limits with more than 300 million of those living over six times the limit.

 

Disaster struck in the London winter of 1952. A fog rolled in over the city and within hours turned to yellowish brown as it mixed with the amounts of soot produced by smokestacks, chimneys, automobiles, and the new diesel-fueled buses. At the same time, London was experiencing a high-pressure weather system that caused a higher layer of warm air trap the cold, unmoving air near the ground. The system prevented the coal smoke from rising allowing the smoke to gather and collect as time passed rather than dispelling.

The smog grew so think that one couldn’t see their feet. Boats came to a halt. Maybe abandoned the attempt at driving. Busses were guided my conductors with flashlights who walked before the bus. Those who braved the walk through the smog struggled not to slip on the greasy ooze that covered the sidewalks. When they came home, they were coated in black. They all looked like coal miners.

“I remember as a nine-year-old in 1959 living in South Ealing barely being able to see to catch the bus to school and my dad having to be guided home by a policeman with a torch – he was on our road at the time but had become completely disorientated. The policeman had a torch and used that to read the road name and house number,” Dave Higgins shared with The Guardian when asked about his experience with the smog.

“Yes, I remember the great smog in the London area. I was 10 years old. Most people heated their homes with dirty coal and did not realize they were contributing to the deaths that resulted. I remember walking to school with a woolen scarf wrapped tightly around my mouth and nose; feeling our way along the hedgerows; holding hands to not get lost; the black soot on the scarf when I took it off at school. I remember the chronic bronchitis that seemed to last all winter then. Mr. Thurston, our Geography teacher, during a class unit on mining, assured us that there was enough coal in Britain to last 100 years when I asked what would happen, and how would we heat our homes, if it ran out? That comment got me thinking and turned me into a life-long environmentalist,” offered Teresa P.

Crime increased under the cover of the smog. Even inside one wasn’t safe. The muck covered any exposed surface and movie theaters closed when the yellow haze became to think for viewers to see the screens before them. It wasn’t just inconvenient they soon realized. Undertakers were running out of coffins. It was deadly. Death rates from bronchitis and pneumonia? They increased sevenfold. The death rates? Ninefold. Even once the smog finally clear five days after, the effects lasted, and death rates reminded high into the summer of ’53. The death toll reached at least 8,000. Possibly as high as 12,000. It was dubbed “The Great Smog” and it was a slap in the face to the human race. Air pollution could kill. It had no mercy.

Initially, the British government took no action. Smog was a common occurrence. Four years later, after further investigation and prompting from Select Committee on Air Pollution, Parliament passed the Clean Air Act in 1956. The Clean Air Act restricted coal burning in urban areas and initiated smoke-free zones and granted homeowners grants to convert from coal to alternative heating systems.

 

The Middle Ages saw the rise of the usage of coal in cities. Documentation exists for the poor urban air quality as far back as the 16th century. The history of this poison is short in the grand scheme of human life, though still long from the human perspective. 500 hundred years out of an estimated possible 2.8 million years. The usage of coal was the primary source of the start of the pollution which only increased in the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. The high population cities in Europe faced issues of low visibility, disrupted traffics, and drastic soaring of death rates. The Public Health Act 1875 was published in England and attempted to reduce the smoke pollute in urban areas.

Even with the new awareness of just how deadly the smog could be, incidents still occur. In 1953 a smog that covered New York City killed between 170 and 260. In 1953, heavy smog shut down school and industry in Los Angeles for most of October of that year. Another smog in London killed 1,000 in 1956. Again in 1962, another 750 Londoners died. New York City was struck again in 1963 and again in ’66. In 2013, air pollution in northern China caused 500 million residents to lose more than 2.5 million years of life expectancy – an average of five years a person – from the unrestricted use of coal in comparison to southern China where coal is not used by heating. In 2015, India’s government says that air pollution had killed 35,000 people over the past nine years. Epidemiologists (scientists who study diseased in populations) claim coal has cut the average person’s lifespan in India by three years.

 

Ella Kissi-Debrah, a nine-year-old living in London spent the night choosing the outfit she wanted to wear to her school disco the next day. However, she never wore the outfit to the party, instead, she wore it to her funeral. “We ended up burying her in the clothes instead,” said her mother, Rosamund. “I didn’t know whether it was the right thing to do, but it felt right at the time.”

An investigation into her death led to a pathologist telling the court that Ella had died due to a severe asthma attack followed by a seizure, The cause? A possible allergic reaction to something in the air. Ella’s asthma attack that led to her death in 2013 after three years of respiratory issues following a chest infection in 2010. Three years of issues that led to her being hospitalized twenty-seven times, three of which were in intensive care. Unsatisfied. the girl’s mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, along with the assistance of her lawyer and acquired research from Professor Stephen Holgate – and expert in asthma management – that helped to show a link between Ella’s hospital visits and an illegally high level of air pollution in the area.

It isn’t a one-off situation, as air pollution has been linked to 40,000 premature deaths a year in the UK and levels of nitrogen dioxide have been illegally high for over eight years in many urban areas. Rosamund is pushing a petition -with more than 100,000 signatures – to her attorney general asking for a new investigation that would put air pollution on Ella’s death certificate. Should she succeed? Ella would be the first-time air pollution was cited on a UK death certificate and officiating her cause of death as such, would be a push towards needed action to prevent further deaths.

“Children whose developing lungs are particularly vulnerable suffer the most from air pollution. For children, breathing the air in cities with the worst pollutions, such as Beijing, Calcutta, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Tehran, is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day,” says Lest Brown, a highly influential environmentalist who has co-authored over 50 books on global issues and the recipient of 26 honorary degrees.

The need to do something to combat the pollution not just on a city level but a national and global level. Barry Commoner, an American biologist who is among one of the founders of the modern environmental movement says, “Air pollution is not merely a nuisance and a threat to health. It is a reminder that our most celebrated technological achievements – the automobile, the jet plane, the power plant, industry in general, and indeed the modern cite itself – are, in the environment, failures.”