New Delhi is already widely known to be a city plagued by the deadly effects of all-pervading pollution, majorly affecting the health of citizens living in the nation's capital or even visiting it.

Now, however, a piece of research on mortality caused by pollution, conducted by the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), has shed light on an alarming countrywide situation — India has hit the mark of half a million premature deaths due to air pollution.

Said Dr Sachin Ghude, an IITM scientist, who has co-authored this study, "Our research suggests that air pollution in India can cause around half a million premature moralities every year. Exposure to fine particulate matter reduces life expectancy by about 3.4 years. We also concluded that the cost of the estimated premature moralities came to about $640 billion in 2011 — 10 times higher than the country's total expenditures on health in 2011."

Other participant researchers included IITM's D M Chate, C Jena, Gufran Beig, S Fadnavis and Prakash Pithani, along with R Kuma, M C Barth and G G Pfister from the Atmospheric Chemistry Observations and Modeling Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, in the US. The study has also been published in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters, a few days ago.

Dismayingly, in terms of absolute numbers, the study has said that Maharashtra stands third in terms of these mortalities at 55,000-57,000 premature deaths per year. At first position is Uttar Pradesh, with West Bengal coming in next. In terms of absolute numbers, New Delhi is actually at sixth position, given that its population is not as large as Maharashtra. However, even in terms of percentage, the state is not far behind, at 0.489 per cent of people per year as against Delhi's 0.059 per cent.

"However, when it comes to life expectancy reduction, Delhi tops the list. For Maharashtra, reduction in life expectancy on account of this pollution is 3.3 years. For Delhi, it is as high as 6.4 years. It is urgent that steps be taken to curb this pollution through controlling vehicular pollution in urban settings and keeping check on biofuel burning in rural areas. For this, diesel vehicles have to be controlled as well as better technology employed."

Commenting on this revelation, Dr Sundeep Salvi, director of the Chest Research Foundation at Kalyani Nagar, told Mirror, "Air pollution and particulate matter affect both the lungs and heart. The entry of this matter into the lungs leads to the several known illnesses, like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cancer and more. But, less known is that it also enters the heart through the blood stream and causes ischaemic heart disease (reduced blood supply to heart), heart attacks and blood pressure problems. The situation is similar in all Indian cities — Delhi just came to the fore because of more publicity. The situation in Pune or Mumbai in Maharashtra is just as bad."

City-based pulmonologist Dr Nitin Abhyankar echoed, "It has been known since 2008 that lung diseases are a leading cause of death in India, which is higher than any other country. Unfortunately, Maharashtra seems to be a forerunner on this list. For instance, when my patients travel abroad, they find themselves in better health and can even walk larger distances. However, when they come back here, health issues automatically rise and walking distances reduce by almost 1/4th. Although much is being done to mitigate these problems, we have a lot of ground to cover now."