Pakistanis spend winter breathing air pollution 20 times over safe levels

#Pakistanis #spend #winter #breathing #air #pollution #times #safe #levels

LAHORE: According to AFP analyzed data, in the worst smog season of winter for many years, the worst winter smog season for many years, at least four months have spent at least millions of Pakistanis breathing toxic air pollution at least four months.

Pakistan regularly is one of the most polluted countries in the world, Lahore often lives with the most contaminated megate between November and February.

The data recorded by the AFP’s independent air monitoring project since 2018 shows that the smog season began a month ago in October in the winter of 2024-2025 and remained high at a higher level, which usually includes cities less than pollution.

14 million residents of Lahore spent six months breathing PM 2.5 – small particles that may enter the lungs and bloodstream – at the global health organization’s recommended level 20 times or higher. In Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, and the capital Islamabad was targeted for 120 days of pollution level in the same throat.

Experts say pollution is mainly due to factory and traffic emissions. It is damaged in the winter when the farmers burn the crop pole and cold temperatures, and the slower winds have trapped deadly pollution.

This year, the winter rains, which usually bring relief, did not reach the end of February, as climate change offers Pakistan’s weather samples quickly. The smog was so fat that it could be seen from space and authorities were forced to close schools serving millions of students, including Lahore, including Lahore.

Rasha Rashid, a young climate activist, said that Islamabad is rapidly becoming “another Lahore” and has launched a legal action against the government. The 21 -year -old, who is asthma, told AFP, “It’s really asthma.” “I can’t go out, even if I have exams. It is affecting not only our physical health but also our mental health.

In a November IPSOS survey, four out of five Pakistanis said they were affected by smog. The effects are worse for children who breathe faster and weaken the immune system.

During this smog season, the Punjab government announced “war against smoke”, which increased the installation of public air quality monitoring equipment and installed nearly 30 30 air -quality monitoring equipment and offered subsidy of machinery to prevent farmers from cleaning and burning crops. It has promised to rapidly enforce the emission regulations on tens of thousands of factories and more than 8,000 brick kilns, which is an important source of black carbon emissions.

But environmentalists and experts say that the action has been complex and sometimes contradictory, including restrictions on private air quality surveillance equipment, which the government claims to be “misleading results that cause panic.” Experts say that anti -SMOG machines, including a tower in Lahore, were closed two months after installation, effectively useless. On the condition of anonymity, the speaker said, “This is like opening an air conditioner.”

Ahmed Ali Gul, of the University of Management and Technology of Lahore, said efforts that deal with the effects of pollution with Musk Point instead of its source. “First, we need to focus on reducing the emission and then we talk about how to protect ourselves from smog.” In Pakistan, the quality of vehicle emissions is limited, and officials acknowledged that 83 % of Lahore carbon emissions are from transport. “Changing into cleaner fuel will produce immediate results, we have seen it in other countries as well,” said Frank Hams, a global CEO of Switzerland’s AQI Air Quality Project. He added, but it “sometimes needs a very strong central effort to make painful changes that need to be done to reduce air pollution.”

The government of Pakistan wants to make one -third of the new sales of electric vehicles (EV) by 2030.

According to the World Bank, cheap Chinese models launched in Pakistan in 2024, currently form only one part of the total sales of cars. Pakistan had a clean air taste during pandemic diseases, when vehicles were forced out of roads and factories in March 2020, but it was short -lived because the economic impact was great to tolerate many.