Air pollution killed 500,000 Indians in 2015
NEW DELHI: PM2.5 air pollution from sources like household pollution, coal power plants, transport, waste, shipping, agriculture and others has killed 500,000 people in India in 2015, a latest report reveals on Tuesday.
Household pollution is caused by burning 'dirty' solid fuel for cooking.
The report published in the medical journal Lancet says that the pollutant PM2.5 produced by dirty combustion is responsible for the deaths.
According to NDTV, for the first time, the report gives the number of deaths caused by each source of the pollutant.
In India, burning solid fuel for cooking remains common today.
"There are somewhere between 60 and 65 per cent household still using solid fuel for some portion of their cooking," said Radha Muthiah, Chief Executive of International Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
"We are actually seeing close to a million deaths in India as a result of prolonged exposure to household smoke. That's not just the woman, but also her children and others in the family."
Doctors say 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair, the size of the PM2.5 pollutant makes it dangerous for the human body as it easily enters lungs and bloodstream.
Another pollutant, PM10, may get trapped in the throat, but PM2.5 is fine enough to pass these natural barriers.
Experts, however, are encouraged by the government's scheme, Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which gives subsidised cooking gas, a much cleaner fuel than wood fire, burning charcoal and chulas.
"In the last one-and-a-half years, because of the initiative of the Indian government, the Prime Minister's Ujjwala [scheme] has reached the homes of more than three crore women," said Dharmendra Pradhan, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister. "We are looking for different ideas for clean fuels."
The reported added that pollution from factories, coal power plant emissions and transport were the other leading PM2.5 sources that killed many Indians in 2015.
India is the fourth-highest emitter of CO2 or carbon dioxide, and its growing population is getting exposed to a high level of pollution.
The country has tripled its energy output since 1980.
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