Delhi children breath toxic air, (click here) reveals Greenpeace air-monitoring survey in schools
Publicising reliable air quality data along with a set of Precautionary Measures are the first steps needed to tackle the issue of air pollution in Delhi
New Delhi, February 16, 2015: The air-quality monitoring survey carried out by Greenpeace inside five prominent schools across Delhi found the PM2.5 levels to be 4 times the Indian safety limits and 10 times that of the World Health Organisation’s. The real-time monitoring data from all the five schools revealed particulate matter 2.5 to be at very unhealthy levels...
There are parents that can afford face masks and then there are the impoverished that do their best to protect their lungs.
Tina Adler, Environ Health Perspect. 2010 Nov; 118(11)
...Ravinder Agarwal, (click here) head of the University Science Instrumentation Centre at Thapar University in Patiala, India, and colleagues used portable spirometers to regularly test the lung function of children aged 10–13 and adults aged 20–35 over the course of a year. The 40 participants were healthy nonsmokers living in a village surrounded by farmland, with little traffic and no industry within 10 km.
Children’s force vital capacity (FVC) dropped from a mean 98% in August 2008 to 92% in July 2009. Mean FVC dipped as low as 88% in October and November, when farmers burned their rice crop residue, and in April and May, when they burned wheat stubble. The children’s mean lung function remained significantly lower throughout the test period. The mean lung function of the adult study participants declined during the burn seasons as well, but largely returned to original levels by the end of the study.
Decreases in lung function correlated with increases in the concentration of particulate matter, which exceeded India’s national air quality standards during the burn season. Small particles (PM2.5 and PM10)—which make up the majority of the smoke produced by crop burning—were more closely associated with decreases in lung function than suspended particulate matter (SPM), which can contain particles 100 μm or larger.... 
