Air Pollution Now Affecting Children From the Day They Are Born

Babies are being exposed to toxic air at birth. Why we need to treat air pollution as a health emergency.

‘Our children are exposed to toxic air the minute they are born,’ says Dr Arvind Kumar, Chairman, Center for Chest Surgery at Sir Gangaram Hospital. He follows it up with this. ‘And we want to cut more and more trees.’

Data from a recent study carried out by the Lung Care Foundation, first published by IndiaSpend, indicates that unlike even a couple of decades ago, 50 percent of all lung cancer patients today are non smokers.

They studied over 150 lung cancer patients over a six-year period between 2012 and 2018.

“70 percent of the patients who were non smokers were under 50 years old.”