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New Delhi Air Pollution Forces Public Health Emergency as Chief Minister Compares City to a 'Gas Chamber'
Suffocating smog forced the Indian capital of New Delhi, a city of more than 21 million people, to declare a public health emergency on Tuesday.
As a thick grey haze settled on the city, the government announced Wednesday morning that schools would be closed for the rest of the week as air pollution worsened and criticism escalated over Indian government's failure to curb pollution levels.
By Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. embassy air pollution tracker said the level of PM 2.5—tiny particulate matter that enter the lungs and bloodstream—reached 1010 AQI. Any PM 2.5 level from 301 to 500 is considered "hazardous" to the general population, according to the U.S. embassy tracker.
Pollution trackers are showing that smog has reached its most dangerous level of the year, making the air more detrimental to human health than smoking 50 cigarettes a day, according to health officials.
"Delhi has become a gas chamber," chief minister of Delhi, Arvin Kejriwal tweeted.
"Every year this happens during this part of year," Kejriwal continued, referring to smoke caused by crop burning in the northern Indian states neighboring Delhi.
Each year farmers in the northern states of Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan burn millions of tons of crop waste in October to clear the land for winter planting. An estimated 35 million tons of crops are burned every year in Punjab and Haryana, contributing to New Delhi's smog.
Vehicle emissions, dust from construction sites and industrial pollution also contribute to the crisis.
Last November saw similarly high levels of pollution, the worst in nearly 20 years, which forced a million children to miss school and caused thousands of workers to report illnesses.
"Every possible step required to tackle the situation has been already identified, and the need of the hour is to put them into action," federal Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan wrote on Twitter.
The air quality in New Delhi is likely to worsen in the coming days. A northwesterly wind is expected to blow in toxic smoke from burnt crops in Punjab and Haryana as farmers prepare for winter planting.
Emergency measures are now being considered, according to Delhi's deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia. The government banned the entry of trucks into the capital and may suspend all construction activities if the pollution levels rise further.
In October, the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) ordered the shutdown of diesel generators and a power plant. It also ordered that some brick kilns and trash burning cease.
On Tuesday, the EPCA also recommended raising parking fees for private vehicles by four times, inside the capital's city limits.
A recent report by the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health that looked at data from 2015 found that pollution led to 2.5 million deaths in India alone.
The report concluded that in 2015 pollution killed nine million people worldwide—about one in six deaths—three times more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.
Of those nine million deaths, air pollution was linked to 6.5 million of them. The vast majority of these deaths occurred in developing countries.
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By Jennifer Molidor
One million species are at risk of extinction from human activity, warns a recent study by scientists with the United Nations. We need to cut greenhouse gas pollution across all sectors to avoid catastrophic climate change — and we need to do it fast, said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
This research should serve as a rallying cry for polluting industries to make major changes now. Yet the agriculture industry continues to lag behind.
Botswana, home to one third of Africa's elephants, announced Wednesday that it was lifting its ban on the hunting of the large mammals.
"The Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism wishes to inform the public that following extensive consultations with all stakeholders, the Government of Botswana has taken a decision to lift the hunting suspension," the government announced in a press release shared on social media.
Company Safety Data Sheets on New Chemicals Frequently Lack the Worker Protections EPA Claims They Include
By Richard Denison
Readers of this blog know how concerned EDF is over the Trump EPA's approval of many dozens of new chemicals based on its mere "expectation" that workers across supply chains will always employ personal protective equipment (PPE) just because it is recommended in the manufacturer's non-binding safety data sheet (SDS).
By Grant Smith
From 2009 to 2012, Gregory Jaczko was chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which approves nuclear power plant designs and sets safety standards for plants. But he now says that nuclear power is too dangerous and expensive — and not part of the answer to the climate crisis.
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‘It’s Raining Plastic’: Researchers Find Microscopic Fibers in Colorado Rain Samples
By Brett Walton
When Greg Wetherbee sat in front of the microscope recently, he was looking for fragments of metals or coal, particles that might indicate the source of airborne nitrogen pollution in Rocky Mountain National Park. What caught his eye, though, were the plastics.
In a big victory for animals, Prada has announced that it's ending its use of fur! It joins Coach, Jean Paul Gaultier, Giorgio Armani, Versace, Ralph Lauren, Vivienne Westwood, Michael Kors, Donna Karan and many others PETA has pushed toward a ban.
This is a victory more than a decade in the making. PETA and our international affiliates have crashed Prada's catwalks with anti-fur signs, held eye-catching demonstrations all around the world, and sent the company loads of information about the fur industry. In 2018, actor and animal rights advocate Pamela Anderson sent a letter on PETA's behalf urging Miuccia Prada to commit to leaving fur out of all future collections, and the iconic designer has finally listened.
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If people in three European countries want to fight the climate crisis, they need to chill out more.
That's the conclusion of a new study from think tank Autonomy, which found that Germany, the UK and Sweden all needed to drastically reduce their workweeks to fight climate change.
"The rapid pace of labour-saving technology brings into focus the possibility of a shorter working week for all, if deployed properly," Autonomy Director Will Stronge said, The Guardian reported. "However, while automation shows that less work is technically possible, the urgent pressures on the environment and on our available carbon budget show that reducing the working week is in fact necessary."
The report found that if the economies of Germany, Sweden and the UK maintain their current levels of carbon intensity and productivity, they would need to switch to a six, 12 and nine hour work week respectively if they wanted keep the rise in global temperatures to the below two degrees Celsius promised by the Paris agreement, The Independent reported.
The study based its conclusions on data from the UN and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) on greenhouse gas emissions per industry in all three countries.
The report comes as the group Momentum called on the UK's Labour Party to endorse a four-day work week.
"We welcome this attempt by Autonomy to grapple with the very real changes society will need to make in order to live within the limits of the planet," Emma Williams of the Four Day Week campaign said in a statement reported by The Independent. "In addition to improved well-being, enhanced gender equality and increased productivity, addressing climate change is another compelling reason we should all be working less."
Supporters of the idea linked it to calls in the U.S. and Europe for a Green New Deal that would decarbonize the economy while promoting equality and well-being.
"This new paper from Autonomy is a thought experiment that should give policymakers, activists and campaigners more ballast to make the case that a Green New Deal is absolutely necessary," Common Wealth think tank Director Mat Lawrence told The Independent. "The link between working time and GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions has been proved by a number of studies. Using OECD data and relating it to our carbon budget, Autonomy have taken the step to show what that link means in terms of our working weeks."
Stronge also linked his report to calls for a Green New Deal.
"Becoming a green, sustainable society will require a number of strategies – a shorter working week being just one of them," he said, according to The Guardian. "This paper and the other nascent research in the field should give us plenty of food for thought when we consider how urgent a Green New Deal is and what it should look like."
- Reduced Work Hours as a Means of Slowing Climate Change ›
- How working less could solve all our problems. Really. | ›
- Needed: A shorter work week – People's World ›
Amazon shareholders voted down an employee-backed resolution calling for more aggressive action on climate change at their annual meeting Wednesday, The Los Angeles Times reported.