Air pollution now a national security threat, says Jairam

Calling India’s air pollution crisis a “full-blown assault on our brains and bodies”, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Sunday said the government’s failure to curb toxic air had turned the issue into both a public health catastrophe and a national security threat.

Citing the State of Global Air 2025 report, Ramesh said nearly two million deaths in India in 2023 were linked to air pollution, a 43 per cent increase since 2000, with nine out of ten of these deaths caused by non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes and dementia. The report, shared by him on X, provides a global analysis of air quality and related health impacts.

“India records around 186 air-pollution deaths per 100,000 people, more than ten times the rate in high-income countries,” Ramesh wrote, pointing out that air pollution contributes to about 70 per cent of deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), 33 per cent from lung cancer, 25 per cent from heart disease and 20 per cent from diabetes.

The Congress leader noted that new evidence links prolonged exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) with brain damage and accelerated cognitive decline. Globally, around 6.26 lakh dementia-related deaths in 2023 were tied to air pollution, he said.

Describing the situation as “a national-security threat to our society, our healthcare system and our future workforce,” Ramesh criticised the government’s efforts under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in 2017. Despite the initiative, he said, PM2.5 levels had continued to rise across the country.

“Our current PM2.5 standard is eight times higher than the WHO’s annual exposure guideline and four times higher for daily exposure. Shockingly, every single person in India now lives in areas where PM2.5 levels far exceed WHO norms,” he said, calling for a radical revision of the NCAP and an urgent update of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), last revised in November 2009.