India’s Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar recently told the parliament that there was no Indian study that linked air pollution with the shortening of life span. The minister went on to add, “Let’s not create a fear psychosis among people by making such irrelevant connections.”

However, studies show he was wrong.

A study anchored by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had said precisely that life expectancy in India was going down due to air pollution. The ICMR in December 2018 had highlighted that the average life expectancy in India would have been 1.7 years higher if the air pollution levels were less than the minimal level causing health loss.

The ICMR is the apex body in India for the formulation, coordination and promotion of biomedical research, is one of the oldest and largest medical research bodies in the world. It is funded by the Government of India.

In fact, the nationwide survey published in the Lancet Planetary Health stated that one in eight deaths in India in 2017 can be attributed to air pollution.

The study, that was the first-ever comprehensive estimate of impact of air pollution in each state of India and was jointly conducted by the ICMR, the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) said that there were 6.7 lakh deaths due to outdoor particulate matter air pollution and 4.8 lakh deaths due to household air pollution. It also highlighted that of the 1.2 million people who died from air pollution-related causes in India, 51.4% were younger than 70 years old.

The Minister was criticised heavily for making such a ludicrous statement. While rebuking Javadekar for making such ludicrous statement, the WHO officials said, “We wish air pollution didn’t kill people but unfortunately, it does.”

Dr Maria Neira, WHO Director, Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health tweeted that she is “happy to facilitate access to the more than 70.000 scientific publications linking air pollution and health.

Various international studies too reveal that long-term exposure to high-level air pollution can have an overall effect on the lifespan. According to another study conducted by the Health EffectsInstitute (HEI), a Boston-based non-profit, and the University of Washington’s Global Burden of Disease Project, about 60% of India’s population is exposed to household air pollution. This is largely due to the burning of firewood and other biomass such as cattle dung cakes for cooking.

“The lungs of a child growing up in this air condition do not develop as fully because they are having a harder time breathing,” said HEI president Daniel Greenbaum. “This sets them up for more disease later in life and a shortening of their life.”

Air pollution is believed to contribute more to the disease burden in India than tobacco use, primarily by causing respiratory infections, chronic obstructive lung disease, heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, and lung cancer.

The WHO says a third of deaths from stroke, lung cancer and heart disease are due to air pollution globally. “This is having an equivalent effect to that of smoking tobacco,” the WHO says on its website.