English
Breathing Delhi’s air is as bad as smoking 7.7 cigarettes a day, estimates a new smartphone app that calculates real-time equivalence between air pollution and cigarette smoking.
The smartphone application, launched last month in Paris, uses location specific data for PM2.5 — floating particulate matter, including organic and inorganic pollutants, with diameter of less than 2.5 microns that can enter the respiratory system — to calculate the quality of air in relation to cigarette smoke. The app uses a study by Berkeley Earth, California-based climate science analysts, to make the calculation.
Going by PM2.5 levels, the app ‘Sh**t! I Smoke’, available on Android and iOS portals for free, shows that inhaling the air in Delhi is equivalent to smoking 7.7 cigarettes a day.
The figure for Lucknow is 8, for Jaipur 7.3, for Bengaluru 0.7, for Chandigarh 6.1, for Ranchi 3.3, for Indore 3.9 and for Kolkata 3.5. Figures for other major Indian cities range between 2 and 7 cigarettes a day.
“PM2.5 particles are small enough to work their way deep into the lungs and into the bloodstream, where they can trigger heart attack, stroke, lung cancer and asthma. Here is the rule of thumb: one cigarette per day is the rough equivalent of a PM2.5 level of 22μg/m3. Of course, unlike cigarette smoking, the pollution reaches every age group,” the study coauthored by Richard Mueller, physics professor, University of California, Berkeley, reads.
