Air pollution is a major threat to public health and contributes to a significant amount of morbidity as well as mortality. Indoor air pollution is a bigger health risk than outdoor air pollution in India, and sometimes cities are cleaner than nearby villages where household pollution is higher, according to the country's two top policy experts. Addressing the India Clean Air Summit (ICAS) 2024, Principal Advisor, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Soumya Swaminathan said, "Studies done in Delhi have shown that women's average exposure to high levels of black carbon (women who are mostly at home) is as much as auto-rickshaw passengers going around outdoor exposed to the ambient air pollution in Delhi, resulting in high systolic blood pressure.
" "Cities contribute less than 20 percent to the overall state emissions, wherever they have been assessed, but household emissions predominate, ranging between 20 percent and 40 percent. Across the country, we are seeing is that sometimes cities are cleaner than the surrounding villages where household air pollution predominates," she said at the summit organised by the think-tank Center for Study of Science, Technology, and Policy. This builds a strong case for expanding the scope of India's National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), which currently focuses on non-attainment cities.
Air pollution is a major threat to public health and contributes to a significant amount of morbidity as well as mortality. Apart from PM2.5 and PM10, short-.