Recently, NDTV India talked to Energy Policy Institute at University of Chicago Director Michael Greenstone and EPIC India’s Senior Associate Director of Communications Ashirbad Raha about Air Quality Life Index that lets us know how much longer would we live if we breathe clean air. As the air pollution season kicks in India and the northern India is engulfed with smog, the web tool can raise pollution awareness among the people.

A new analysis of the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI), produced by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), shows the average citizen living in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) region of India can expect to lose about 7 years of life expectancy because air quality fails to meet the World Health Organization’s (WHO) guideline for fine particulate pollution.

This is due to a 72 percent increase in pollution from 1998 to 2016 in the region that is home to about 40 percent of India’s population. In 1998, the impact on people’s lives would have been half of what it is today, with residents losing 3.7 years of life expectancy.