The deleterious effect of air pollution and its remedial measure

Pages: 1935-1938
Subhendu Bhattacharya and Sona Raghuvanshi (Amity Global Business School, Mumbai, Maharashtra)

With the progress of human civilization, burning of fossil fuel has become inevitable in several human activities and business processes. Release of smoke and corrosive gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide along with other pollutants has become rampant in order to carry out regular economic activities such as production, transportation, distribution at a higher scale to fulfill the need of progressive human society. In number of regions sand and desert dust, flying ashes through chimney, waste burning and deforestation are supplementary contributor of air pollution. The emission of carbon dioxide which is the most common of the green house gases is active to trap heat in the atmosphere which leads to global warming and drastic change in climatic condition. The climate change can result in heat wave situation, extreme weather condition, draught in cultivable land, food supply disruption, etc. When human beings are exposed to polluted air that looms large as silent killer, the short term problems can be sneezing, coughing, eye irritation, headaches and dizziness and in the long term it can lead to, severe respiratory disease such as chronic asthma, respiratory infection, heart ailment, stroke, lung cancer etc. As per WHO report, bad outdoor air caused premature death for an estimated 4.2 million people in 2016 and about 90 percent of them are from low and middle income countries. Cities across the Asia such as Delhi in India, Hengshui in China, Peshawar in Pakistan, Zabol in Iran are distinguished as highly polluted ones. In a startling reality, estimated 91 percent of world population lives in places where air quality supersedes WHO prescribed limits. Countries across the world have started taking action to prevent the deadly menace of air pollution. In India, Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana Scheme has brought relief to some 37 million women living below the poverty line with free access LPG connection as clean household energy resource. In many cities strict emission norm has been reinforced and process has been initiated to run emission free electric vehicle in greater number.