New Delhi: On the day the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) marked world’s first “Smog Day”, to remember those who died due to air pollution, Delhi-NCR’s air quality dipped to “severe” on Tuesday afternoon.
While the observance of this day — December 5 — is inspired from the first day of the lethal smog that hit London in 1952 and which led to Britain’s Clean Air Act, UNEP said that “estimated 18,000 people die every day worldwide as a result of air pollution”.
Growing as an initiative to share the experiences of people living in London and New Delhi, the UNEP points out that each of us will breath about 250 million litres of air in our lifetime “no matter where we live and how polluted the air is”.
“On the worst day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 during the First World War, 20,000 British soldiers are thought to have died. Yet, an estimated 18,000 people die every day worldwide as a result of air pollution,” said a report under a UNEP campaign — “clearing the air — a tale of two cities (Delhi and London)”.
Meanwhile the air quality of Delhi and NCR deteriorated to “severe”, with major pollutant PM2.5 or particles with diameter less than 2.5 micrometeres ranging over 10 times the safe value across 21 monitoring stations in the region at 4 pm.
Air pollution is responsible for 6.5 million premature deaths globally every year according to the World Health Organisation.
There were nearly 1.1 million early deaths in India in 2015 due to air pollution. (IANS)
