LAHORE: First, there was fog. Smokey-grey Lahori winters were the stuff of folklore and legends when the temperatures would drop, as would visibility, confining most residents to the warmth of their homes.
Now, it’s just smog. Heavily-polluted air that’s getting worse with each passing year, resulting in the city being named as one with the worst air quality in the entire world this year.
Climate Action Pakistan shares an image from an app calculating air quality, equating the inhaling of Lahore's air to number of cigarettes one has smoked, which changes by the day. (Picture – Climate Action Pakistan Instagram, October 30)
Taking matters into their own hands, Climate Action Pakistan (CAP) – an organization seeking to educate Pakistanis about the harmful effects of climate change – launched a hashtag #SaansLenayDo (let us breathe) on social media, calling upon the government to take action.
Dawar Hameed, a CAP core organizer spoke to Arab News about the group’s strategy and why prioritizing the issue is the need of the hour:
What exactly is smog?
Hameed: Smog is primarily a combination of particles such as PM2.5, NOx and SO2. Breathing either of these for short periods (24 hours or less) can cause adverse respiratory effects like airway inflammation, bronchoconstriction and asthma symptoms. These are aerosols, as opposed to greenhouse gasses and could also be a result of fossil fuel emissions, along with CO2. Essentially, the cause of both air pollution and global warming is the same, although the pollutants have different properties.
Why has it impacted Lahore so much?
Both in terms of geographical proximity and policies, Lahore stands at a very unlucky spot. The city’s accelerated growth is not sustainable. In fact, no city in Pakistan can be considered a ‘sustainable city’. Lahore’s vehicle population is only second to Karachi’s. However, while vehicular emissions in Karachi does not build up due to it being close to the sea, Lahore does not have a ‘perpetual’ wind. As vehicle numbers rise, so does PM2.5 air pollution. Industrial growth is another factor. When this is combined with the emissions arising from crop burning during autumn, all the pollutants start coagulating resulting in the nasty smog.
How do apps that calculate air quality arrive at their conclusions?
This is based on a calculation from Berkley Earth. The researchers compared deaths linked to PM2.5 air pollution with deaths linked to smoking cigarettes in China. Every 22 microgram/cubic meter (μg/m3) of air pollution is equal to smoking one cigarette. The app simply takes the PM2.5 reading from the nearest credible air-quality monitor and divides it by 22, to arrive at the number of cigarettes an individual is “smoking” by breathing in the polluted air.
How can we do away with this problem?
Smog is a crisis that’s too big to be fought at individual level. Ideally, we need massive shifts in energy, urban management and agricultural policies. Individuals can only protect themselves.
What are safety precautions that people can adopt to breathe cleaner air?
People have gradually started using PM2.5 masks, which stop pollutants from entering the body for short periods of time. Inside homes, the affluent are also installing air purifiers. The fact is that air inside homes is almost as bad as outside, because PM2.5 particles are the tenth of a human-hair in size. People should avoid staying outdoors for too long, stay away from high traffic concentration areas, avoid rush hours, and only aerate their houses and offices during early afternoon hours when the AQI index is the lowest.
What are the dangers of not addressing the issue now?
This is a repeat cycle. The public outcry during the season leads to cosmetic measures such as shutting down brick kilns, imposing bans on crop burning, etc. These are in no way a replacement for an actual change in policy. The Punjab Clean Air Action Plan was made to address these policy gaps, but nearly all of the 23 policy interventions remain unimplemented. By not addressing it, the government is ensuring that every citizen is losing a part of their lifespan as PM2.5 particles damage various parts of the bodies. By not providing a safe environment to its citizens, the state is actually putting its entire future generation at risk.
