India has no data on disease or deaths due to air pollution, says top health minister

The lack of data on air-pollution related disease or death has long been a hurdle in gauging the human cost of the man-made disaster in one of the largest countries in Asia

RH Desk
December 10

India’s top health minister has said that the country lacks any conclusive data that will establish a direct correlation between death or diseases exclusively due to air pollution.

The minister, Bharati Pravin Pawar informed the lower house of India’s bicameral parliament, Lok Sabha on Friday in a written reply.

Pawar, however, conceded that air pollution was one of the many factors responsible for respiratory ailments and associated diseases.

“Health is impacted by a number of factors which includes food habits, occupational habits, socio-economic status, medical history, immunity, heredity, etc., of the individuals apart from the environment,” Pawar said in a written reply.

Most of the cities with the worst air quality are in India. Last year, the World Air Quality Report, prepared by Swiss organisation IQAir, ranked New Delhi as the most polluted capital city of the world for the fourth consecutive year. The index listed 35 other Indian cities with the worst air quality tag for 2021.

The lack of data on air-pollution related disease or death has long been a hurdle in gauging the human cost of the man-made disaster in one of the largest countries in Asia

Global health bodies have estimated that lakhs of people in India due to air pollution every year. In 2019, India ranked first in terms of air-pollution-related deaths around the world. According to a report on pollution and health published in The Lancet Planetary Health, at least 16.7 lakh deaths in India were attributed to air pollution in 2019.

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