ADAM JADHAV » Blog Archive » Get it straight, Delhi. That's not fog. It's smog.
Get it straight, Delhi. That's not fog. It's smog.
Which really makes it not fog at all, but smog. This year there may be 100 hundred dismal hours of it.
Delhi, it's time we owned up to it. Call a spade a spade and start thinking about how to fix the problem. And to be clear, the problem is us.
Yes, weather plays a small part, but as I've written before, what makes the wintry choking haze particularly harmful is in fact human pollution. I'm not alone in arguing that we actually need to shift our discourse and talk about the phenomenon as anthropogenic smog, not just annoying wintry smog.
And new research shows it's worse than you ever thought. During rush hour, pollution (particulate matter) at autorickshaw-level — where most people breathe — is apparently 50 percent higher than all what is measured by those safely cloistered ambient air measuring stations on top of buildings and away from roads.
And, in case anyone needs a reminder, even the ambient air readings aren't exactly awesome. In fact, they're exactly not awesome.
Delhi's air pollution levels, which, according to the latest WHO Ambient Air Pollution Database, are at just under 300 micrograms per cubic meter. The world's second most polluted city, Karachi, clocks in at a little over 250, while the major Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai, internationally notorious for their pollution, clock in a relatively fresh 120 and 80 respectively.