A Rant on India's Air Quality

 Photo by Ataberk Güler from Unsplash

Today, I came across a statistic that I knew I was always passively aware of, but never truly internalized. Today, I read that 21 of the 30 most polluted cities on Earth are in India. Then, I  discovered that the WHO recommended average PM2.5 value is 5 μg/m^3. What PM2.5 means isn't really relevant- just think of it as an arbitrary unit telling you, this is how polluted my air is. 

This is what some PM2.5 values mean:

What's more interesting is that every day at precisely 6PM, the PM2.5 levels in my house* shoot up to 70μg/m3 from about 20μg/m3, and this trend is probably not unique to just me. You see, every evening at 6, dinner preparations begin and as a result, despite my kitchen housing an exhaust, my lungs become a chimney. 

I wonder, how many other ever-so-tiny, everyday activities I, and millions of others undertake that little by little, are destroying us. 

*these values came from a Dyson air purifier I own.