Citizens of Lahore have been choking from dangerous levels of toxic smog for weeks now. Schools have been closed and outdoor activities, including travel and transport, severely curtailed to reduce the burden on the healthcare system. Although toxic levels of smog have been happening at this time of the year for more than a decade, this year appears to be particularly bad with hundreds of people hospitalized to treat breathing problems. Millions of Lahoris have seen their city's air quality index (AQI) cross the 1,000 mark several times this month - anything above 300 is considered dangerous. What can Pakistan do to cut this level of air toxicity? Is there a silver bullet here? Let's try and understand the root causes of this problem to answer these questions.
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| NASA Satellite Images of Fires and Smog Taken on Nov 6, 2024. Source: NASA |
South Asia is particularly susceptible to pollutants that hang in the air for extended periods of time. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellite images show dull gray haze hovering over northern India and Pakistan, and parts of Bangladesh. It is believed that emissions from solid fuel burning, industrial pollutants and farm clearing fires get trapped along the southern edge of the Himalayas in winter time. NASA Earth Observatory explains this phenomenon as follows:
"The haze.... likely results from a combination of agricultural fires, urban and industrial pollution, and a regional temperature inversion. Most of the time, air higher in the atmosphere is cooler than air near the planet’s surface, and this configuration allows warm air to rise from the ground and disperse pollutants. In the wintertime, however, cold air frequently settles over northern India, trapping warmer air underneath. The temperature inversion traps pollutants along with warm air at the surface, contributing to the buildup of haze."
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| Trapped Smog in Lahore. Source: Aljazeera |
The single biggest factor contributing to heavy smog in October-November period each year in Indian and Pakistani Punjab is the lighting of a huge number of fires to burn the agriculture waste to clear the land for planting winter crops. The Indian government estimates that 38% of the smog in the Indian capital New Delhi comes from stubble burning in Punjab. Government policies are needed to incentivize widespread use of machines to remove agriculture waste. This can be accomplished by subsidizing the purchase and/or rental of these machines in both India and Pakistan. There should also be heavy fines imposed on those farmers who insist on setting fires to clear the land.
Other factors, such as emissions from vehicles and industrial units, also require better regulations and stricter enforcement. Coal-burning units such as brick kilns and cement factories should be moved further away from the population centers. Such measures can significantly cut toxic smog affecting people's health and productivity in the Punjab region straddling the India-Pakistan border. It will be helpful if Indian and Pakistan authorities can work together to solve this common problem.
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7 comments:
Salam Sir
Thank you for sharing this very interesting and useful data and post. Sir pls check the latest good news. Mashallah government of Punjab in Pakistan has conducted the artificial rainfall in Lahore and in other cities by using artificial cloud over skies of Punjab. This experiment was done and tested by Pakistan Army, government of Punjab and some institutions. This technology was locally developed.
One of my brothers, an agri expert, proposed to Punjab gov to aquire bailers to harvest the residual stems of rice and provide free service to farmers for bailing. The cost would be recovered by exporting these bails as fodder or for local consumption but the gov was more interested in tractors.
So the farmers continue to burn the same which becomes major contributor to smog.
Transport sector contributes 83.15% of the pollution in Lahore while agriculture waste burning adds only 3.9%, according to available data.
Here's the data:
Vehicles 83.15%
Industry 9.07%
Agriculture waste burning 3.9%
Trash burning 3.6%
Commercial 0.14%
Residential 0.11%
Muzaffar: "Transport sector contributes 83.15% of the pollution in Lahore while agriculture waste burning adds only 3.9%, according to available data"
These percentages are for an entire year. It’s important to note that all of the agriculture waste burning happens in a very short period of time in winter when the pm2.5 particles produced by fires are trapped in the atmosphere causing heavy toxic smog. Other sources such as vehicles and industries are spread year-round and not concentrated in winter months.
Smog Drops From Hazardous To Unhealthy In Pakistan's Lahore | Barron's
https://www.barrons.com/news/smog-drops-from-hazardous-to-unhealthy-in-pakistan-s-lahore-0a9e1959
The air quality in Pakistan's smog-choked city of Lahore on Sunday fell below the threshold considered "hazardous" for humans for the first time in two weeks.
The AQI index reached a daily average of 243, still "very unhealthy" but below the highest level of 300 considered "hazardous".
The level of PM2.5 particles was also more than 10 times higher than the level deemed acceptable by the World Health Organization.
The city of 14 million people close to the border with India peaked at a record AQI of 1,110 on November 14.
Punjab, home to more than half of Pakistan's 240 million people, closed schools in its major cities on November 6, and on Friday extended the closure to November 24.
It has also banned all outdoor sports in schools until January, and cracked down on polluting tuk-tuks, barbecues and construction sites in pollution hot spots across Lahore.
Seasonal crop burn-off by farmers on the outskirts of the city also contributes to toxic air the WHO says can cause strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases.
What the government of Pakistan can do is design and develope a system that could detect the smog from the skies of Pakistan, check it's level of intensity, compare it's level of intensity with the threshold which shows the maximum amount of smog that could damage and cause harm to the people and apply certain function or algorithm that could make decisions based on the intensity of that smog and predict that hoe dangerous this smog can become in the future. This is basically the task and job of the meterological department of Pakistan that should work in collaboration with SUPARCO.
Then after when the system predicts how dangerous the level of smog will be in the future. The government of Pakistan must in advance build the artificial cloud that could actually suck or absorb such smog or they should design and develope a machine or a device that could suck or absorb the smog , analyse it and break it up into small tiny particles.
How a change in rice farming unexpectedly made India’s air so much worse
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/22/india-smog-haze-air-pollution/
No one anticipated that an initiative to save groundwater by delaying the annual rice season would aggravate northern India’s already miserable air pollution.
An Indian initiative to preserve vanishing groundwater by delaying the annual sowing of rice has led to a dramatic worsening of air pollution in New Delhi and the surrounding region, already infamous for its suffocating smog, according to farmers and researchers. And no one saw it coming.
For decades, farmers have burned the field stubble that remains after harvesting rice to prepare for the next crop.
But when government officials ordered a delay in the summer sowing of rice by a few weeks in part of India to take advantage of the coming monsoon rain, they did not consider that winds would have shifted by harvest time. Now, the harvest coincides with winter weather, and the winds blow the smoke across the plains of northern India.
The agricultural mandate, first adopted in 2008, has caused up to a 20 percent increase in smoke particles in northern Indian cities, including Delhi, according to a team of researchers from the United States, India and elsewhere.
This week, Delhi’s poisonous air reached its worst level in five years. In response, the government shut down schools, construction and some offices.
“The growing season for rice has shifted, and you would think that would be fine,” said Loretta Mickley, an atmospheric chemist at Harvard University. “The average person will say: What does groundwater have to do with air pollution in Delhi?”
Gurpreet Sangha’s family owns farmland in two Indian states. In the western state of Rajasthan, where the government-ordered delay does not apply, his farmers continue to harvest rice and burn the stubble near the end of September.
Nearly a month later, after the winds have shifted, the farmers on the tract in the northern state of Punjab do the same. The law in Punjab prohibits sowing rice seedlings into nurseries of long troughs before mid-May and transplanting those seedlings into flooded paddies before mid-June, delaying the harvest and the stubble burning.
“If you are standing in my land in Rajasthan or in my family’s land in Punjab, the smoke from the burning is all the same,” Sangha said. “But in September, the smoke just withers away from Rajasthan. And in October or November, my smoke from Punjab goes and chokes Delhi.”
“They plugged one problem and gave rise to another,” he added.
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