Pollution is the presence of a wrong thing, in the wrong place, in the wrong quantity, and at the wrong time. It is evident that such a thing will prove harmful. Air pollution is one of India’s primary killers. The country accounts for 60 per cent of the global deaths attributed to foul air and has also the dubious distinction of being home to 16 out of 20 of the world’s most polluted cities according to the World Health Organisation’s global PM2.5 (finer particulate matter) database. Air pollution does not respect the etiquette of borders. It blows with the wind into and out of urban centres, undermining localised efforts to control it.

While air pollution affects everyone, children are particularly vulnerable because their respiratory systems (lungs and their airways) remain in a developing stage and are not mature enough to cope with the onslaught of oxidant-induced injury caused by toxic air pollutants. Moreover, children have an underdeveloped detoxification machinery with weak anti-oxidant defence that may result in permanent alterations in the lungs. There is a growing interest among scientists to assess the regional build up and profile of pollution by using high resolution satellite data and utilising methods like aerosol optical depth. For instance, scientists at the IIT, Delhi, and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) are tracking the nature and shifts in the build-up of air pollution peaks in the IndoGangetic Plain.

Moreover, interest has grown in the episodic pollution caused by the movement of smoke from crop stubble burning in Haryana and Punjab across the regions. Globally, governments are seeking answers to this challenge. At the international levels, there are inter-governmental treaties and agreements on trans-boundary air pollution. But in the words of Al Gore, Nobel Laureate and former US Vice President: “The struggle to save the global environment is in one way much more difficult than the struggle to vanquish Hitler, for this time the war is with ourselves. We are the enemy, just as we have only ourselves as allies.” Scientists typically measure rates of air pollution through concentrations of ozone and particulate matters.

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