NEW DELHI: India can save up to 2 billion life years if the places that exceed the national air quality standards (very polluted) were brought within standards, US based economist, Michael Greenstone has estimated. Greenstone who is 3M professor of Environmental Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said around 281 districts with a population of 628 million people live in highly polluted areas that don't meet the air quality standard.
He was delivering a lecture on 'Shorter Lives Due to Air Pollution' at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) foundation day celebrations on Friday. Greenstone's estimates are based on data from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and other studies which show that 52% of India's population is living in areas that are monitored by CPCB, where PM 2.5 (very fine respirable particles) level is higher than the safe standard. Over 80% of the population is living in areas where PM 10 (coarse particles) levels are higher than the safe standard.
Greenstone had conducted a similar "quasi-experimental" study on air pollution in China which assessed the life expectancy of a population North of Huai river where a lot of coal power plants were located due to a home heating policy and compared it with South of Huai river where no such policy existed. Life expectancy of those North of Huai river were found to be far lesser. A similar model of experiment is used in case of India to see if all the polluted places meet the PM 2.5 standard, what difference would it make on life-expectancy.
Greenstone found that each person living in these areas may gain 3.3 years of life in India. The mean PM 2.5 levels in these areas is 72 microgram per cubic metre when the national safe standard is only 40 microgram per cubic metre. "China is making big strides in dealing with air pollution. India too is very highly polluted and needs to make policy to deal with it. WHO has recently released data that 1 in 8 deaths were due to air pollution in 2012. The majority of the impact is borne by South East Asia," said Greenstone who was also the chief economist President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors .
