India's air pollution is

so bad it's reducing life

expectancy by 3.2
years
Updated by Brad Plumer on February 24, 2015, 10:30 a.m. ET

@bradplumer brad@vox.com

Commuters masked against air pollution

(Photo by Auscape/UIG via Getty Images)

negotiating city traffic. Mumbai, India.

China's struggles with smog and air pollution have gotten a lot of
attention over the years.

But the air quality in India now appears to be even worse with
one new study (
http://www.epw.in/system/files/SA_L_8_210215_Michael_Greenstone_0.pdf)
finding that excess pollution is reducing the life expectancy of 660
million Indians by 3.2 years, on average.

India's pollution problem is worse than

China's
Some background: The World Health Organization recently
published data ( http://www.vox.com/2014/5/12/5700532/chinasair-pollution-may-be-bad-but-indias-is-much-worse) on pollution
around the world, focusing on airborne particles smaller than 2.5
micrometers (known as PM2.5). These particles come from coal
plants and vehicles, and, at high levels, have been linked to serious
respiratory problems (
http://www.epa.gov/pmdesignations/faq.htm#0).
On this score, 13 of the world's 20 most-polluted cities (
http://scroll.in/article/693116/Thirteen-of-the-20-most-pollutedcities-in-the-world-are-Indian) are all in India. And India's cities
have much higher PM2.5 levels than China's:
Comparing air pollution in India's cities vs. China's vs. Europe
vs. US

The bars show the number of cities in each country with average annual PM2.5 concentrations in a given
range. Bars in red show cities that exceed national air-quality standards (NAAQS). The World Health
Organization considers an annual average of 10 micrograms per cubic meter to be safe. India's air-quality
standards set the limit at 40 micrograms per cubic meter. (Greenstone et al, 2015)

So how much harm is all this pollution causing? A new study (

http://www.epw.in/system/files/SA_L_8_210215_Michael_Greenstone_0.pdf)
in Economic & Political Weekly a top journal in Mumbai finds
that 660 million people in India now live in areas where PM2.5
levels exceed the country's national air-quality standards. (And, as
the chart shows, India's a standards are already looser than even
China's.) That excess pollution alone, they estimate, reduces life
expectancy at birth by 3.2 years, on average.
"The loss of more than two billion life years is a substantial price to

pay for air pollution," Rohini Pande, director of Harvard Kennedy

School's Evidence for Policy Design and a co-author of the study,
said in a statement. "It is in Indias power to change this in cost
effective ways that allow hundreds of millions of its citizens to live
longer, healthier, and more productive lives."

How to calculate the death toll from air

pollution

This photo taken on December 8, 2009 shows two people talking outside a coal powered power plant on the
outskirts of Linfen, in China's Shanxi province, regarded as one of the cities with the worst air pollution in the
world. (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)

Researchers have long known that particle pollution in the air (

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates) is terrible for people's
health. But it's always been difficult to measure the precise
impacts especially from the high levels in China and India. After
all, scientists can't just run tests where they expose people to
heavy pollution at random.

A few years ago, however, economist Michael Greenstone and his

colleagues found a way to conduct a quasi-natural experiment in
China. They noticed that, back in the 1950s, the Chinese
government started providing free winter heating via coal boilers
to people living north of the Huai River. Meanwhile, those living
south of the river didn't get the free boilers. This disparity gave the
researchers a way to isolate the effects of air pollution.
In a 2013 paper (

EVERY 100
MICROGRAMS OF
'TOTAL
SUSPENDED
PARTICULATES'
PER CUBIC METER
CUT LIFE
EXPECTANCY BY
THREE YEARS
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/03/1300018110) for
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Greenstone
and his co-authors calculated that an extra 100 micrograms per
cubic meter of "total suspended particulates" in the air was
associated with a drop in life expectancy of about three years.
"I was surprised by the magnitude of the effect," Greenstone told
me (
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/08/chinascoal-pollution-is-much-deadlier-than-anyone-realized/) when that

study came out. It meant that coal pollution in northern China had
cut the lifespans of 500 million people by roughly 5.5 years, on
average.
Now, this latest paper (

http://epic.uchicago.edu/i/publication/Particulate_Matter_Pollution_in_India_Gree
which Greenstone co-authored with Janhavi Nilekani, Rohini
Pande, Nicholas Ryan, Anant Sudarshan, and Anish Sugathan
applies those same results to India.
The authors first calculate that about 660 million people, mostly in
north India, are living with annual levels of PM2.5 that exceed
national air quality standards (which are currently set at 40
micrograms per cubic meter weaker than those in China,
Europe, or the United States):
Estimates of PM2.5 concentrations across India

2001 district boundaries are used in this map. (Greenstone et al, 2015 (
http://epic.uchicago.edu/i/publication/Particulate_Matter_Pollution_in_India_Greenstone,_Pande,_et_al._PreProof.pdf)

Using the numbers from the China study, the authors could get a
rough sense of how much harm this is doing that's where they
estimate that excess air pollution in these regions is reducing life
expectancy by an average of 3.2 years.
Now, this is only an average: actual exposure can vary a lot from
region to region and person to person. Policemen who are working
in traffic all day get a higher exposure to air pollution. Wealthier
families who can afford air purifiers in their homes get less. But the
overall numbers are staggering.

The authors also find that air pollution levels in India's cities
haven't shown any improvement in the last five years. If anything,
things have gotten a bit worse.

Can India clean up its air pollution?

Children cover their face to take precaution from the air pollution by a mixture of pollution and fog at NCR
region on November 7, 2012 in New Delhi, India. (Photo by Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

India and China, of course, didn't invent air pollution. Cities like
London and Los Angeles also once had horrific smog and
particulate problems. But as they got richer, they cleaned up
and there's every indication that developing countries will do the
same. The question is when.
China, for its part, has already begun to crack down on its air
pollution, through policies to limit coal burning in cities and curtail
vehicle use (
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/world/asia/china-releasesplan-to-reduce-air-pollution.html?_r=0).

So far, India has taken fewer steps in that direction. One reason for
that is that India is still much, much poorer than China. (Among
other things, India has 400 million people without electricity; China
has virtually none.) So the country is still focusing heavily on
economic growth which often means expanding the use of fossil
fuels. Energy analyst Mackay Miller summed this up on Twitter:

mackaymiller
@mackaymiller

Follow

I asked why smog wasn't more of a political problem in India.

The answer: "The list of problems is too long. " j.mp/17qJVv6
11:05 AM - 23 Feb 2015
The New York Times
Cutting Through Indias Smog
Indians appear to be waking up to the dangers of dirty
energy, but their current path remains self-destructive.

View on web
19

mackaymiller
@mackaymiller

23 Feb

I asked why smog wasn't more of a political problem in India. The

answer: "The list of problems is too long. " j.mp/17qJVv6

mackaymiller
@mackaymiller

Follow

In this narrative, the very different political reaction to smog in

China v India is a Maslow's hierarchy issue. China resolved the
basics.
11:09 AM - 23 Feb 2015
3

mackaymiller
@mackaymiller

23 Feb

In this narrative, the very different political reaction to smog in

China v India is a Maslow's hierarchy issue. China resolved the
basics.

mackaymiller
@mackaymiller

Follow

Fossil fuels have unlocked growth, freeing countries of certain

afflictions (grinding poverty), saddling them with new ones (lung
disease)
11:11 AM - 23 Feb 2015
1

That said, the problem has gotten so bad of late that India's
policymakers are beginning to take notice. In November 2014,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced he would make airquality data ( http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/10/17/india-airpollution-index-javadekar-idINKCN0I61L420141017) available to
the public and pledged to set new emissions standards (
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-to-announcenew-emission-standards-for-power-plants/article1-1289715.aspx)
for power plants.
Then, in February, according (
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/world/asia/delhi-wakes-upto-an-air-pollution-problem-it-cannot-ignore.html?_r=0) to
Gardiner Harris of The New York Times, Indian officials asked the
Obama administration for help in both measuring pollution and in
finding ways to reduce pollution from trucks. "One driver for the
change," Harris reported, "is a deluge of stories in Indian and
international news outlets over the last year about Delhis air

problems."
In their paper, Greenstone and his colleagues recommend a
number of additional steps, including better air quality monitoring
(India's cities have far fewer monitors than China's do), civil
penalties against polluters (India's pollution penalties are actually
so severe that they're rarely enforced), and possibly an emissions
trading system similar to the one that the United States set up (
http://www.rff.org/documents/RFF-DP-09-40.pdf) for acid-rain
pollution.

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