In 2019, deaths and disability caused due to air pollution cost India a GDP loss of 1.36% valued at $36.8 billion. This is the key takeaway from a recent study published in the peer-review scientific journal The Lancet.
The study estimated the economic impact of air pollution as it led to loss of output due to premature deaths and morbidity. Researchers looked at both indoor and outdoor air pollution across states and measured its impact.
“The basis for linking air pollution to health is grounded in the large pool of epidemiological studies that now straddle all regions of the world,” said Kalpana Balakrishnan of Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, who is one of the co-authors of the study. “The large burden results from the ubiquitous exposures in India, the high prevalence of conditions impacted by air pollution and the population density.”
The results are a part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study - an ongoing worldwide collaboration of research institutes and researchers assessing mortality and disability from major diseases. The research reported in this particular study is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UN Environment Programme and Indian government’s premier research institute, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
India’s toxic air
In 2019, 1.67 million deaths in India were attributable to air pollution. This was nearly one in every five deaths in the country or 17.8% of all deaths. While the deaths due to indoor air pollution decreased by 64.2% between 1990 to 2019, those due to outdoor air pollution went up by 115.3%.
“Estimates have uncertainty as mentioned in the report due to uncertainty in exposure, risk assessments and in background disease rates,” said Sagnik Dey, associate professor at IIT-Delhi’s Centre for Atmospheric Sciences and one of the co-authors of the study. “One of the key data gap is the lack of surface monitoring in the rural areas, where pollution level is equally high.”
Indian cities make up six of the world’s 10 most-polluted urban areas, according to the latest World Air Quality Report from IQAir.
Globally nine out of 10 people breathe air that exceeds guideline limits by the World Health Organization (WHO). Air pollution has been linked to infant deaths, and this month a landmark inquest in the UK allowed it to be listed as a cause of a nine-year-old girl’s death in her medical death certificate.
Indo-Gangetic belt worst hit
The economic losses linked to air pollution was the most in states lying in and around the Indo-Gangetic plain, the study found. The loss was highest in the states of Uttar Pradesh (2·15%), Bihar (1·95%), Madhya Pradesh (1·70%), Rajasthan (1·70%), and Chhattisgarh (1·55%), which have a relatively low per-capita GDP, and in Punjab (1·52%) and Uttarakhand (1·50%) which have relatively high per-capita GDP.
The states where the economic loss was the least (0.75% or less) were Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Goa. Overall southern states were doing better than the northern states.
The study reiterated that investing in air pollution control measures could be highly cost-effective and pay for itself many times over. “Efforts to improve the health burden estimates will continue with new evidence emerging, but we should not wait for the perfect result and act immediately with aggression,” said Dey.