Last week’s blanket of toxic smog over Tricity left residents literally gasping. City Beautiful all but disappeared and in its place stood the urban nightmare — a barely visible sky, vague outlines of buildings, visibility down to a kilometre or so, and a wall of smoke around Sukhna, the city’s beloved showpiece lake. The meteorological department said it was a result of easterly winds bringing the paddy stubble smoke from Punjab and Haryana, and not enough of a wind system over Chandigarh to blow it off. The air quality index (AQI) value was 375 on November 8, the worst ever, according to data.

But here’s the bad news: data of the last 12 years shows that Chandigarh’s clean air is a myth, and better only relatively speaking, as other cities are much worse. The average annual pollution level in Chandigarh has always been beyond permissible limits, according to data collated by the Chandigarh Pollution Control Committee (CPCC).

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Studies show that people could live more if there is no pollution. Recently, as per the Air Quality-Life Index (AQLI) tool developed by the Energy Policy Institute at The University of Chicago (EPIC), if India is able to reduce air pollution to meet the WHO standards, people in the country could live four years longer on average.

Continue reading at The Indian Express…