1.

Introduction

Air pollution is one of the most serious environmental risks. The most recent Global
Burden of Disease (GBD) study estimates that air pollution indoor and outdoor
combined was the cause of 5.5 million premature deaths globally in 2013. Air
pollution also has further consequences on human health, leading in particular to an
increasing number of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Moreover, it affects
crop yields and the environment, with impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems,
amongst others. These impacts have significant economic consequences, which will
affect economic growth as well as welfare. [OECD, June 2016]

This report presents projections of the costs of outdoor air pollution, focusing on
impacts on human health, including both mortality and morbidity. Both the
consequences for the economy and the welfare costs from premature deaths is
focused.

Clean air is the foremost requirement to sustain healthy lives of humankind and those
of the supporting ecosystems which in return affect the human wellbeing. Release of
various gaseous emissions and particulate matter (PM) has been on the rise due to
rampant industrialized growth Anthropogenic emissions of various kinds are being
pumped into the atmosphere (called primary pollutants) and lead to the formation of
new pollutants due to chemical reactions in the atmosphere (called secondary
pollutants). These are building up the concern of ambient air pollution (AAP) as a
prominent global threat to human health in many ways. For instance, according to the
Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC nearly all the non-CO2 climate-altering
pollutants are health damaging, either directly or by contributing to secondary
pollutants in the atmosphere.

The UN General Assembly's Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable

Development Goals forwarded to the Assembly its proposal for a set of goals that
consider economic, social and environmental dimensions to improve peoples lives
and protect the planet for future generations at the conclusion of the Groups
thirteenth and final session at UN Headquarters on 19 July 2014. The proposal
contains 17 goals with 169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable development
issues, including ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making
cities more sustainable, combating climate change, and protecting oceans and forests.
The goal 3 Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages aims at
securing a healthy life for all. There are 9 sub-goals to this goal and sub-goal 3.9
targets to substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous
chemicals and air, water, and soil pollution and contamination by 2030. [TERI, 2015,
Air Pollution and Health]

It is essential that the hazardous impacts from environmental pollution are regularly
reported and monitored. Of the various kinds of pollution, the air pollution has
attracted high priority in respect of environmental regulation since the environmental
damage due to such pollution mostly affects human well-being directly by way of
adverse health effects on the population exposed to it. Air quality has deteriorated in
most large cities in India, a situation driven by population growth, industrialization
and increased vehicle use. Integrated air quality management (AQM), which is an
evaluation and monitoring tool, is a challenge to carry out in most developing
countries because of the lack of information on sources of air pollution and
insufficient ambient air monitoring data that is available in the public domain. [TERI
2009]

Urban air pollution is largely a result of combustion of fossil fuels that are used in
transportation, power generation, industrial sector, and other economic activities.
Household air pollution (HAP), also known as indoor air pollution (IAP), is a serious
area of concern in rural spaces, as majority of this population continues to depend on
traditional biomass for cooking and space heating and depend on kerosene or other
liquid fuels for lighting, all of which are highly likely to lead to high levels of HAP.
More than 70% of the population in India depends on traditional fuels (firewood, crop
residue, cow dung, coal and lignite) for cooking and almost 32% depend on kerosene
for lighting purposes. About 3 billion people in the world (more than 40% of the
global population) rely on traditional biomass for the purpose of cooking and an
estimated 500 million households rely on kerosene and similar for the purpose of
lighting (WHO, 2015). In rural India, for instance, only 11.4% of the households use
LPG for cooking (Census 2011).

As recognition of the worlds air pollution problems has grown, estimates of the
numbers of deaths and years of healthy life lost attributable to outdoor air pollution
have proliferated. Most of these health burden estimates are from the World Health
Organization (WHO) or from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)
Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project.

In its most recent update, released in 2016, the WHO estimated there were 3 million
deaths from PM2.5 exposure for the year 2012, while the most recent GBD estimate
was 4.2 million for the year 2015

2. Parameters of air quality

Air pollution consists of a complex mix of various substances in different physical

and chemical states and these arise from various sources. Many of them are believed
to be gravely harmful to human health. Eminent international institutions like the
World Health Organisation (WHO) consider a certain set of air pollution indicators to
get closer to quantification and monitoring of air pollution as quantification of all the
air pollutants has not yet been feasible on a global scale. WHO focuses on four health-
related air pollutants, namely, particulate matter (PM), measured as particles with an
aerodynamic diameter lesser than 10 m (PM 10) and lesser than 2.5 m (PM 2.5),
nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and ozone. The focus on just these four is for the sake
of monitoring the general state of air quality and it does not mean that the other air
pollutants do not impact health of humans and that of the environment (WHO, 2006).

Figure 1 and Figure 2 give the annual mean concentration of PM10 and PM2.5 in
different regions of the world respectively. For both the figures, the data represented
belongs to years in the period 2008-2012 since this data is available for different years
for the different stations. The highest and the lowest recorded values of PM 10 and
PM2.5 for each region are represented in these two figures. The WHO guideline values
for particulate matter are 20 g/m 3 for PM10, 10 g/m3 for PM2.5, 40 g/m3 for NO2
and 20 g/m3 for SO2. The orange line denotes the WHO limits. The red dots plotted
over each countrys bar graph in both the figures represent the HDI value for that
country as reported in the year 2012. [TERI, 2015, Air Pollution and Health]
 Figure 1: Annual mean concentration of PM10 (ug/m3) in regions of the world

Source: Ambient Air Pollution Database, WHO (2014)

Figure 2: Annual mean concentration of PM2.5 (ug/m3) in regions of the world

Source: Ambient Air Pollution Database, WHO (2014)

3. Air Pollution Impacts on Respiratory Health

In 2012 alone, 7 million deaths in the world were attributable to the combined effects
of ambient (3.7 million) and household (4.3 million) air pollution (WHO, 2015).
Figure 3 shows the leading causes of deaths and premature deaths in the world (as of
2010). Ischemic heart disease is at the forefront in this ranking of causes, and COPD,
lower respiratory infections, lung cancer are also amongst the top five causes of
deaths worldwide.

As part of an update on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2010, it was
found that essentially five different kinds of respiratory health conditions are the
causes behind the number of deaths. About 36% of the deaths are said to be
attributable to Ischaemic Heart Disease (IHD), 33% to stroke, 17% to Chronic
Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), 8% to Acute Lower Respiratory Disease
(ALRI) and 6% to lung cancer. The update also quantifies the effect on people from
different gender and age groups. According to it, 49% of the 7 million in 2012 were
men (aged 25 years or above), 42% were women (aged 25 years or above) and 9%
were children (under the age of 5 years) (WHO, 2014). Deaths in Western Pacific low
and middle income region is the highest in the world, followed by South-East Asia
and then by Africa.

Table 1 presents data for every five years from 1990 to 2010 for the percentage of
total global deaths due to causes attributed to air pollution categorized under three
main diseases. As per the data observations, it can be said that the total global deaths
due to all the major respiratory diseases seem to be reducing systematically for the
time period in consideration. This is also due to the improvements made over these
years, 1990 to 2010, in the quality, accessibility and availability of health services and
medicines, that are being provided to the geographical areas where treatment from the
illnesses are required. There is insufficient data to be able to state that the percentage
of total global deaths that are attributed to air pollution have reduced over these years
due to improvements in global air quality, if any.

Table 1: Percentage of total global deaths due to causes that are attributed to air
pollution

[Source: WHO 2015]

Indoor air quality has emerged as one of the most important issues of environment
and health worldwide. Household air pollution (HAP) due to biomass cooking fuel
use is an important risk factor for a range of diseases, especially among adult women
who are primary cooks, in India (Lin SS et al 2010). India has recently identified HAP
as one of the key indicators in its National Monitoring Framework for Prevention and
Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (MoHFW 2012). Biomass fuel remains a
widely used energy source in rural India where nearly 80% of households use them as
the primary cooking fuel. In contrast, the majority of urban households use liquefied
petroleum gas (LPG) as the primary cooking fuel; however, about 19% of urban
households use biomass fuel for cooking purposes. Poverty, inaccessibility to
improved cooking fuel, and lack of awareness about harms of biomass emissions are
among the major factors that drive their widespread use (MoSPI 2010). Use of
biomass fuel leads to harmful health effects due to the emission, during its incomplete
combustion, of a large number of air pollutants such as carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur
dioxide (SO2), respirable particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), poly-cyclic aromatic
hydrocarbon (PAH), benzene, and metals like lead and copper. It has been estimated
that about 2.4 of 5.6 million cases of chronic bronchitis, 0.3 of 0.76 million cases of
Tuberculosis , 5 of 51.4 million cases of cataract among adult Indian women and 0.02
of 0.15 million stillbirths across India are attributable to household air pollution due to
biomass cooking fuel (Sehgal M, Suresh R et al. 2014).

4. Air Pollution in India: Current Scenario

In 2016, severe air pollution has disrupted everyday life, especially during the winter.
In 2015 air pollution (PM2.5) levels increased in a rapid manner overtaking even
China. Even though pollution levels are increasing across the country, the emphasis so
far has been on Delhi. There has been a growing realization that the majority of
Delhis pollution is coming from outside its borders and that pollution levels in other
states like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are also increasing. However, the
country is yet to come to the full understanding that air pollution is a national problem
and to win the fight against it, we need to act as a country and across city or even
regional boundaries. Indias air pollution has become a public health and economic
crisis. There are increasing numbers of people who die prematurely every year with
the increasing pollution levels. Deaths due to air pollution are only a fraction less than
the number of deaths caused by tobacco usage. Global Burden of Disease (GBD), a
comprehensive regional and global research program including 500 researchers
representing over 300 institutions and 50 countries, has estimated that 3283 Indians
died per day due to outdoor air pollution in India in 2015, making the potential
number of deaths due to outdoor air pollution in India in 2015 to 11.98 lakh. On the
economic front, loss of productivity and the forced closures of schools and industries
have already started impacting our economy. The World Bank estimates that India
loses around 3% of its GDP due to air pollution. This makes air pollution one of the
biggest issues to fight if we are to protect peoples lives, public health and our
economy.

Trends in numbers of deaths attributable to PM2.5 and ozone exposure in the most
populous countries for all ages and sexes is given in Figure 3 and 4 respectively.
:

Figure 3: Numbers of deaths attributable to PM2.5 exposure

Source: STATE OF GLOBAL AIR, 2016

India and Bangladesh experienced some of the largest increases in PM 2.5-attributable

mortality, on the order of 50% to 60%. India now approaches China in the number of
deaths attributable to PM2.5
 Figure 4: Numbers of deaths attributable to Ozone exposure

Source: STATE OF GLOBAL AIR, 2016

India and China account for most of the ozone-attributable COPD deaths across all
years, but India accounts for much (about 67%) of the global increase since 1990.
Over the last 25 years, India experienced a nearly 150% increase in ozone-attributable
deaths, while Chinas number remained about the same.

The assessment of Air Pollution levels for Delhi highlighted that PM10 concentrations
are 268 g/m3 for year 2015, which were at 4.5 times higher than the NAAQS annual
limit set by CPCB and about 13 times the annual limit set by WHO for PM 10. Detailed
observation of the data suggests that the PM 10 levels has been very high all around the
year for 2015 for Delhi with October to February being the severely polluted months
when the PM10 concentrations even touched 500 g/m3

.It has been long established as the pollution capital of the world by WHO, 2014 and
most of the debate on air pollution in India are still centered around Delhi. Various
studies have been done to understand the source contribution to Delhis Air pollution,
the most recent being the study by IIT Kanpur. According to the study, The total
PM10 emission load in the city is estimated to be 143 t/d (based on average annual
activity data). The top four contributors to PM 10 emissions are road dust (56%),
concrete batching (10%), industrial point sources (10%) and vehicles (9%); these are
based on annual emissions. According to the study control measures applied at
power plants within 300 km radius of Delhi will effectively reduce PM 10 and PM2.5
concentration by about 62 g/m3 and 35 g/m3 respectively.Similarly 90% reduction
in NOx can reduce the nitrates by 45%. This will effectively reduce PM 10 and PM2.5
concentration by about 37 g/m3 and 23 g/m3 respectively. It implies that control of
SO2 and NOx from power plants can reduce PM 10 concentration approximately by 99
g/m3 and for PM2.5 the reduction could be about 57 g/m3.

5. Conclusion

There is an urgent need to adopt various strategies to improve urban and indoor air
quality. To improve air quality and reduce the burden of diseases, several
interventions have been adopted in India. In order to reduce vehicular pollution,
CPCB set vehicular emission standards in India in 1986 for both petrol- and diesel-
driven vehicles. The standards were later revised in 1987 and 1989. To curb further
vehicular pollution, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) has adopted
the Auto Fuel Policy in 2002 which laid down a roadmap for introduction of cleaner
fuels and vehicles in the country upto 2010. The Bharat Stage (BS) IV norms were
implemented in 13 cities from April 2010 based on the roadmap, and BS III norms
were implemented in entire India from October 2010. Compressed natural gas (CNG)
has been introduced in many cities of the country. Heavy-duty trucks still remain on
BS-III standards all across the country, although they are registered in cities where
BS-IV norms have been introduced. Auto Fuel Vision Committee was set up in 2013
to recommend the future roadmap on advancement of fuel quality and vehicular
emission standards upto 2025. The committee has recommended the introduction of
BS-IV and BS-V norms across the country by 2017 and 2020, respectively. BS-VI
emission norms are recommended to be introduced by 2024.

In order to control the indoor air pollution through provision of clean energy access ,
government has introduced various schemes that would facilitate clean energy access
such as the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana, the Village Energy Security
Programme, and the Remote Village Electrification Programme. The Ministry of New
and Renewable Energy (MNRE) is promoting setting up of biogas plants in all the
states and union territories of the country. Biogas plants are being promoted under the
scheme National Biogas and Manure Management Programme for setting up of
family-type biogas plants. According to the MNRE, about 82 7003 family-type biogas
plants have been set up till March 2014 against the projected target of 1.06 lakh
biogas plants.

Issues of acceptability, affordability, and poor awareness levels about alternate

cooking fuels or modern technologies are the most major hurdles. On the supply side,
pricing and distribution of different cooking fuels vary geographically and across
demographic segments. Purely governmental planning without community
participation affects the implementation and success of such schemes. Awareness
generation among public and policy makers would help improve the path each
community could take toward cleaner fuels.

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