Thick toxic smog covered India’s capital New Delhi on Tuesday morning, as fireworks set off during the Hindu festival of Diwali caused air pollution to reach hazardous levels.
People celebrating the festival set off fireworks late into Monday night, filling the air with smoke that mixed with emissions to send the city’s Air Quality Index to “severe” levels above 350 in some districts. Levels above 350 are considered too dangerous to breathe, the World Health Organisation has said.
Visibility was reduced to a few metres as a grey haze cloaked vast areas of the city. “I have never seen anything like this before. We can’t see anything here because of pollution,” tourist Vedant Pachkande told AP.
India’s top court last week eased a blanket ban on fireworks in New Delhi during Diwali, instead allowing limited use of “green firecrackers” that cause less pollution and are designed to cut particulate and gas emissions by about 30 per cent.
The court had said they could be used during specific hours from Saturday to Tuesday but, like past years, the rule was mostly flouted.
New Delhi and its metropolitan region is home to more than 30 million people and routinely ranks among the world’s most polluted cities during the winter, when Diwali fireworks coincide with cooler weather and smoke from crop residue fires set by farmers in nearby states.
Authorities in New Delhi have introduced measures aimed at curbing pollution levels, including limits on construction activity and restrictions on diesel generators. But environmentalists say long-term solutions, such as cleaner energy and stricter vehicle-emission controls, are needed to prevent the annual crisis.
Rising pollution also cuts the amount of sunshine India receives, a study found. Scientists said sunshine hours – the time strong sunlight reaches the Earth – have declined steadily across most of India due to rising air pollution, according to a study published this month in Scientific Reports, a journal by Nature Portfolio.
The researchers attributed the drop to increasing aerosols – tiny particles from industrial emissions, biomass burning and vehicle pollution.
“We see a greater impact in more polluted regions such as northern India,” said Manoj K Srivastava, a scientist at Banaras Hindu University and one of the study’s authors.
He said the reduction in sunshine can affect the amount of solar power India can generate, as well as the country’s agricultural productivity, in addition to damaging the local environment and people’s health.
