India currently has clean air standards far beyond the World Health Organization’s recommended level of 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The paper argues that to safeguard its inhabitants from the hazards of contaminated air, India needs to significantly lower its clean air standards to at least comply with WHO recommendations.
The study discovered that even air pollution levels below present air quality regulations in India raise the nation’s daily death rates.
Over 33,000 deaths annually in ten cities in the country—Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Shimla, and Varanasi—can be linked to air pollution levels beyond WHO recommendations.
“A significant number of deaths were observed even in cities not considered to have high air pollution, such as Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Chennai,” according to the report. “India’s national air quality standards should be made more stringent, and efforts to control air pollution redoubled,” reports also added this.
