Comment by Riaz Haq on November 17, 2024 at 9:59am

Smog Drops From Hazardous To Unhealthy In Pakistan's Lahore | Barron's

https://www.barrons.com/news/smog-drops-from-hazardous-to-unhealthy...

The air quality in Pakistan's smog-choked city of Lahore on Sunday fell below the threshold considered "hazardous" for humans for the first time in two weeks.

The AQI index reached a daily average of 243, still "very unhealthy" but below the highest level of 300 considered "hazardous".

The level of PM2.5 particles was also more than 10 times higher than the level deemed acceptable by the World Health Organization.

The city of 14 million people close to the border with India peaked at a record AQI of 1,110 on November 14.

Punjab, home to more than half of Pakistan's 240 million people, closed schools in its major cities on November 6, and on Friday extended the closure to November 24.

It has also banned all outdoor sports in schools until January, and cracked down on polluting tuk-tuks, barbecues and construction sites in pollution hot spots across Lahore.

Seasonal crop burn-off by farmers on the outskirts of the city also contributes to toxic air the WHO says can cause strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases.

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 24, 2024 at 10:28am

How a change in rice farming unexpectedly made India’s air so much worse

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/22/india-smog-haze-air...

No one anticipated that an initiative to save groundwater by delaying the annual rice season would aggravate northern India’s already miserable air pollution.

An Indian initiative to preserve vanishing groundwater by delaying the annual sowing of rice has led to a dramatic worsening of air pollution in New Delhi and the surrounding region, already infamous for its suffocating smog, according to farmers and researchers. And no one saw it coming.

For decades, farmers have burned the field stubble that remains after harvesting rice to prepare for the next crop.

But when government officials ordered a delay in the summer sowing of rice by a few weeks in part of India to take advantage of the coming monsoon rain, they did not consider that winds would have shifted by harvest time. Now, the harvest coincides with winter weather, and the winds blow the smoke across the plains of northern India.

The agricultural mandate, first adopted in 2008, has caused up to a 20 percent increase in smoke particles in northern Indian cities, including Delhi, according to a team of researchers from the United States, India and elsewhere.

This week, Delhi’s poisonous air reached its worst level in five years. In response, the government shut down schools, construction and some offices.

“The growing season for rice has shifted, and you would think that would be fine,” said Loretta Mickley, an atmospheric chemist at Harvard University. “The average person will say: What does groundwater have to do with air pollution in Delhi?”

Gurpreet Sangha’s family owns farmland in two Indian states. In the western state of Rajasthan, where the government-ordered delay does not apply, his farmers continue to harvest rice and burn the stubble near the end of September.

Nearly a month later, after the winds have shifted, the farmers on the tract in the northern state of Punjab do the same. The law in Punjab prohibits sowing rice seedlings into nurseries of long troughs before mid-May and transplanting those seedlings into flooded paddies before mid-June, delaying the harvest and the stubble burning.

“If you are standing in my land in Rajasthan or in my family’s land in Punjab, the smoke from the burning is all the same,” Sangha said. “But in September, the smoke just withers away from Rajasthan. And in October or November, my smoke from Punjab goes and chokes Delhi.”

“They plugged one problem and gave rise to another,” he added.

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