The morning after India’s Diwali celebration, there is something in the air.
It’s particulate matter: the toxic, asthma-inducing residue from millions of sparklers and fireworks, set off Sunday night as part of the Hindu festival of lights.
In New Delhi on Sunday night, a local air quality monitoring system was showing levels of 410 micrograms of ultrafine particulate matter (PM) per cubic meter. That’s twice the amount of PM2.5 as recorded on October 29 by a state monitoring program — and nearly 10 times more the World Health Organization’s guidelines suggest for human health.
PM2.5 — made up of particles roughly a third the diameter of human hair — is considered particularly dangerous to human health. The World Health Organization recommends exposure to no more than 10 micrograms per cubic meter on an annual average basis, and no more than 25 micrograms per cubic meter for a daily average.
“Delhi’s air remains so polluted throughout the year that it doesn’t really have room for additional pollution during Diwali,” Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director at New Delhi’s Centre for Science and Environment, told the Guardian.
Even before the holiday, local reports were warning that this year’s celebration would cause worse-than-usual air pollution. Low winds, agricultural burning, and trash fires for warmth all contribute to northern India’s particularly bad air quality during the winter. Winds were lower this year for Diwali than the past two years.
Diwali — and other firework-centric holidays around the world — annually cause air quality problems in cities around the globe.
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This year, Diwali came on the heels of a new UNICEF report that finds nearly one in seven children — some 300 million worldwide — live in areas with outdoor air pollution that is six or more times higher than international guidelines.
“Air pollution is a major contributing factor in the deaths of around 600,000 children under five every year — and it threatens the lives and futures of millions more every day,” UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake said in a press release. “Pollutants don’t only harm children’s developing lungs — they can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and permanently damage their developing brains — and, thus, their futures. No society can afford to ignore air pollution.”
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International guidelines consider it a long-term hazard to breathe air that has more than 10 micrograms of ultra-fine particulate matter per cubic meter. Some 2 billion children are regularly exposed to air quality that exceeds that limit.
“Poor children are among the most at risk,” the report says.
The World Health Organization estimates that 2.1 million deaths could be prevented each year, across all age groups, by meeting global air quality guidelines for PM2.5.
Residents in New Delhi took to social media Monday to document the poor air quality.
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