In the News
April 11, 2025
By Sonia Awale
Besides multiple street demonstrations that gridlocked Kathmandu’s traffic for the past weeks, public discourse in Nepal has also been dominated by dangerously high air pollution levels.
Caused mostly by hundreds of forest fires raging across the country, the smoke contains suspended soot particles that harms human health. Thursday’s rain have cleared the air somewhat, and many people will soon forget how bad the air quality was. But the time to address the roots of next summer’s fire season is now.
The reason everyone was talking about air pollution was because the smoke from wildfires was visible. But much more toxic are the invisible and odourless gases from vehicular and industrial emissions which have always been there.
The theme of World Health Day on 7 April this week was ‘Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures’ dedicated to preventing maternal and newborn deaths. It is estimated that in Nepal, 30% of neonatal mortality can be blamed on air pollution.
But that is only part of the story. Harmful as fine particulate matter is to human health, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone and other gases in vehicular emissions are more hazardous to health.
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The latest Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) report by the University of Chicago shows that the annual concentration of PM2.5 in Kathmandu’s air rose from 17.87µg/m3 in 1998 to 31.33µg/m3 in 2022. Air pollution has got worse by 75% in Kathmandu in 25 years.