COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — More than half of India’s population lives in places with such polluted air that each person loses an average of 3.2 years in life expectancy, according to a recent study by researchers from the University of Chicago, Yale and Harvard.
Altogether, 660 million Indians could lose 2.1 billion years as a result of air pollution at enormous cost to the country’s economy, the researchers found.
“This study demonstrates that air pollution retards growth by causing people to die prematurely,” said Michael Greenstone, an author of the study and the director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
A World Health Organization study last year found that 13 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India, with New Delhi’s air the world’s worst. But India’s government has made economic development its priority and has announced its intention to double the country’s use of coal over the next five years, which is likely to worsen the country’s air pollution.
But a growing array of studies has shown that the costs of India’s poor air are substantial. For instance, research has shown that India’s air pollution problems may cut agricultural production by a third. That might explain why wheat and rice yields in India have begun to level off or even drop in some states after decades of growth.
The authors of the recent study say that India should improve its monitoring of air quality, institute a system of civil monetary penalties for excessive polluters and adopt a trading system for pollution rights.
For years, Indians have seemed largely unaware of the country’s pollution woes. But a concerted campaign over the past year by Indian media outlets is beginning to change that.
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