75% deaths in India in 2015 due to household burning, coal combustion: Report

New Delhi: A report by experts from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)- Bombay and the US-based Health Effects Institute has revealed that 75 percent of air pollution-related deaths in India in 2015 were caused by exposure to household burning emissions and coal combustion, which came chiefly from rural areas.

The report further said that some 268,000 deaths in 2015 took place due to residential biomass fuel burning, while coal combustion from both thermal electric power plants and industry contributed to 169,000 deaths.

Anthropogenic dust contributed to 100,000 deaths; agricultural burning to 66,000 deaths; and transport, diesel, and kilns were behind over 65,000 deaths in India.

"This systematic analysis of emissions from all sources and their impact on ambient air pollution exposure found significant contributions from regional sources (like residential biomass, agricultural residue burning, and industrial coal), underlying that from local sources (like transportation and brick kilns)," said Chandra Venkataraman from IIT-Bombay.

According to the 2015 Global Burden of Disease analysis, these levels contribute to over 10 percent of all Indian deaths each year.

The premature mortality, attributed to air pollution, contributed to over 29 million healthy years of life lost.

Overall, air pollution contributed to nearly 1.1 million deaths in 2015, with the burden falling disproportionately (75 percent) on rural areas.

The 2017 Global Burden of Disease identified air pollution, both outdoors and in households, as the second most serious risk factor for public health in India, after malnutrition, contributing to 6.4 percent of all healthy years of life lost in 2016.

"India has some of the highest levels of outdoor air pollution in the world," the researchers wrote in the "Special Report 21, Burden of Disease Attributable to Major Air Pollution Sources in India".

"The most comprehensive air pollution estimates available from both satellite and Indian ground-level measurements of fine particulate matter indicate that 99.9 percent of the Indian population is estimated to live in areas where the World Health Organisation Air Quality Guideline for fine particulate matter was exceeded in 2015, contributing to some 1.1 million deaths in India in 2015."

This new study provides the first comprehensive assessment conducted in India to understand exposures at national and state levels from all major sources of particulate matter air pollution (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 µm, or PM2.5).

It takes advantage of enhanced satellite data and India's growing network of air pollution monitors and is the first to estimate the exposure from different air pollution sources state by state throughout India.

(With IANS inputs)