Poisoning the Air

 Gases emitted from industries, transport facilities, power plants and garbage dumps make the atmosphere toxic and result in deadly health conditions like emphysema, asthma, respiratory allergies, and lungs and cardiac diseases. Globally, over 2.4 million people are estimated to have succumbed to the harmful effects of these gases each year. 

At the national level, India meets 80 percent of its energy requirements by burning coal. This pollutes the air and takes the lives of over 300,000 people each year. In the guise of development through capitalism, the impact on nature and humans is downplayed. The greed or tremendous profit drives capitalists to bypass environmental rules and regulation. To secure huge profit margins, capitalists turn a blind eye to requirements like using filters on factory chimneys and providing water treatment plants for the toxic water released from their plants.

Emission of poisonous gases from factories has been the cause of several heart-wrenching disasters. In 1952, over a thousand people lost their lives due to the toxic smoke released by factories in a period of only 6 days in London. The toll rose to eight thousand the very next month. Similar incidents were repeated in Sverdlovsk (Russia), Donora (USA), Pennsylvania and Bhopal (India). In 1984, the gas-leak tragedy at Union Carbide (an American enterprise) gas plant in Bhopal saw the lives of thousands devastated by the disaster. The gas leak was a consequence of ignoring repeated warnings by workers and journalists, over leakage and safety norms in the Carbide plant. Even today, the aftermath continues to haunt India. In July 2010, leakage of gas in the Sewri industrial area near Mumbai Harbour severely injured 76 persons. Mineral fiber asbestos, baddly affects indoor air quality, which causes cancer and respiratory disease, is banned in many countries, but its production continues unbarred in India. The government oppresses local people who raise such issues, so that companies can continue to make profits.

 America is the former largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world but it is now China. America and China are largely responsible for the world's air pollution and global warming. The effect of global warming is far- reaching, and is thus more deadly than the instant effect of air pollution. The emission of smoke from vehicles is a major source of global air pollution. Ownership of private cars is a status symbol for prosperous middle and upper class people, and 70 percent of air pollution is due to smoke emitted by these vehicles. 

In the last 20 years, vehicular and industrial pollution in India has increased by eight and four times respectively while economic development has merely grown two and a half times. Air pollution has crossed the permissible limits in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and other big Indian cities. Bengaluru even enjoys the infamous epithet of being the 'asthma capital'. Studies show that out of 6 million inhabitants of Bengaluru, 10 percent of adults and 50 percent of children below the age of eighteen years suffer from diseases caused by air pollution. Every year, 8000 citizens die of diseases caused by gases released by airplanes alone. This aspect of rapid capitalistic economic development is accurst yet veiled by the capitalist media and armchair intellectual.