Foul air causing deaths in India? 'Yes', 'can't say': 2 govt arms take differing stands

NEW DELHI: Is air pollution directly causing deaths in India? The ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MOEFCC) and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) under health ministry have offered starkly different answers to this question, exposing a policy contradiction at the heart of the govt's public health and environment response.

On Thursday, MOEFCC told Parliament there was "no conclusive data in the country to establish direct correlation of deaths exclusively due to air pollution". Two days earlier, ICMR said in an RTI response that 12.4 lakh deaths in India in 2017, 12.5% of all deaths that year, were caused by air pollution.




Replying to an RS question about National Clean Air Programme, deaths caused by chronic pulmonary diseases and whether air pollution was a national health crisis, MOEFCC said there was no relation between deaths and pollution, adding that PM10 levels had dipped in several cities after implementation of the clean air programme.

Earlier this week, ICMR responded to an RTI filed by environment activist Amit Gupta, saying air pollution was responsible for lakhs of deaths in the country, basing the answer on a 2017 study.

The RTI response clarified the death estimates were not anecdotal but derived from modelling-based research, developed in collaboration with the Public Health Foundation of India and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The findings were published in 2018 in international medical journal, The Lancet, as part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study.

"ICMR partnered with PHFI & IHME and developed estimates based on modelling. Research findings titled 'The impact of air pollution on deaths, disease burden, and life expectancy across the states of India: the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017' were published in The Lancet Planetary Health 2018 on 6 Dec 2018 (www.thelancet.com/planetaryhealth). According to the article, 1.24 million... deaths in India in 2017... were attributable to air pollution, including 0.67 million from ambient particulate matter pollution and 0.48 million... from household air pollution. Of these deaths attributable to air pollution, 51.4% were in people younger than 70 years," the reply added.

"Both central ministries have completely different viewpoints, which is concerning given the crisis," said Amit Gupta. Recently, govt data showed Delhi witnessed a steady rise in deaths due to respiratory diseases over the past 3 years. It said the city recorded 9,211 deaths due to respiratory diseases in 2024, up from 7,432 in 2022. At the same time, circulatory or cardiovascular diseases remained the top cause of death in Delhi, claiming as many as 21,262 lives in 2024.