🔗 Share this article

Tuesday brought inhabitants of the world's most polluted city encountered inhaling extremely polluted air that fell into the "severe" category.

Record-Breaking Air Quality Readings

Various sections of the capital registered an pollution measurement over 500, which represents 10x the healthy threshold recommended by the World Health Organization.

In some locations, concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 soared to of 1800, amounting to 15-20x higher than healthy levels.

Pyrotechnics Restrictions and Current Policy Shifts

For the past four years, the government had maintained a total prohibition on the distribution and bursting of firecrackers during Diwali due to their significant contribution to the deadly smog that engulfs the metropolis as the cold season begins.

Yet recently, the recently formed regional administration appealed to the judicial authority to seek a relaxation of the prohibition.

They proposed allowing "green crackers" – previously questioned by conservation groups as being only roughly 30 percent reduced emissions – as a middle ground between "cultural practices and public health".

Court Verdict and Enforcement

Much to the frustration of environmental and health advocates, judicial authorities agreed to the proposal, specifying that green firecrackers could be set off during limited time windows throughout the celebrations.

Throughout the festival evening, there was considerable disregard of the regulated periods across the city, with little regulation regarding whether the firecrackers being used were actually the eco-friendly version.

Several air quality sensors throughout the city showed contamination spiking around the night hours to extremely hazardous levels seen during Diwali in at least recent memory.

International Effects

The proliferation of pyrotechnics during the celebrations also initiated a controversy with bordering the neighboring country, with officials in Pakistani the Punjab region partly blaming declining atmospheric conditions in their urban centers on pollutants traveling from neighboring India following the celebrations.

Persistent Pollution Problem

Alarmingly severe concentrations of air contamination in the city have remained as a major problem for more than 15 years, with the condition continuing to worsen.

Near Diwali, the amount of hazardous airborne contaminants in the air has been observed to increase dramatically to 70% higher the worst readings ever documented in China's capital, which was previously considered as the globally most contaminated metropolis.

Multiple Contamination Contributors

The problem in Delhi is caused by a convergence of different contributors including automobile exhaust, construction debris, construction activities, garbage fires and smoke from agricultural fires in adjacent states of neighboring agricultural zones.

In these regions, farmers routinely set their fields on fire to prepare for next season, generating hazardous haze that then gets trapped over the city as winter air descends.

Public Health and Economic Impact

The economic and health consequences on the roughly thirty-three million inhabitants calling home the Delhi area is enormous, according to multiple studies.

These hazardous conditions causes high levels of nervous system, cardiovascular and breathing diseases, and can potentially cause malignancies.

Air quality crisis is calculated to be accounting for approximately 10k untimely deaths per year in the city.