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Bengaluru: There is enough evidence and data to show that there is a strong association between air pollution and not only lung diseases, but also several other serious health issues, several medical doctors and researchers told The Wire.

This is contradictory to what the minister of state for environment, forest and climate change, Kirti Vardhan Singh, submitted to parliament in a written response on December 18.

Singh had said that there is “no conclusive data” to establish a “direct correlation between higher AQI levels and lung diseases”.

There is a lot of data globally to show that air pollution is strongly associated with poor lung health – and the World Health Organisation too recognises this, said Dr Vijay Hadda, pulmonologist at AIIMS Delhi.

Hadda said that a study conducted by AIIMS itself, by its then-head of the medicine department Dr G.N. Pandey, and published in 2002 in the Indian Journal of Chest Disease and Allied Sciences, showed that the number of emergency visits increased during times of higher air pollution.

“Yes absolutely, we still see this trend,” Hadda said when asked if the pattern still holds more than two decades later.

“In the majority of........

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