Indians look for solutions only when toxic pollution soars

NEW DELHI — The truth of New Delhi’s toxic air finally hit home for Rakhi Singh when her three-year-old son began to cough constantly early this year. She bought air purifiers for her home. When a thick, grey haze turned the view outside her home into a scene from a bad science fiction film last month, she bought pollution masks.

“Having a kid made the reality of the city’s pollution hit me harder,” she said.

The news that the Indian capital is one of the dirtiest cities in the world is three years old. But the awareness that it is toxic enough to leave its citizens chronically ill and require long-term lifestyle changes is relatively nascent.

The first week of November, when a thick blanket of toxic haze covered the city, did much to hasten that awareness. And with the awareness came a brisk uptick in the sale of air purifiers and pollution masks.

As the noise and smoke from millions of firecrackers from the Hindu festival of Diwali died down, the city woke up Nov 1 to soaring levels of PM2.5 — pollution particles so tiny they can get deeply embedded in the lungs.

Levels in the Indian capital averaged well over 900 micrograms per cubic metre, more than 36 times the level the World Health Organization (WHO) considers acceptable and 15 times the Indian norm.

Manufacturers and importers of air purifiers and pollution masks say that late 2016 is the first time they have had a serious number of Indian families inquiring about and buying their products.

“It is only in 2016 that we have started to get through to the middle class,” said Mr Barun Aggarwal, who heads Breathe Easy, a company that assesses homes and offices in New Delhi for pollution and provides solutions such as air purifiers and indoor plants.

When Mr Aggarwal started his business in 2013, he had no customers for months.

Later that year, a WHO report describing New Delhi as the world’s dirtiest city was released.

“In the last four months (of 2013) we finally managed maybe 50 customers,’’ he said, adding that those first customers were almost entirely foreigners living in the Indian capital who came from cities with much cleaner air.

This year, he expects to hit close to 5,000 customers, with more local residents looking for solutions, Mr Aggarwal said.

SmartAir, a company that started selling low-cost air purifiers in China in 2013, set up shop in India in early 2015 and sold 1,000 units of its basic do-it-yourself model that year.

This year, it sold about 500 pieces in the first week of November alone.

When the Indian capital topped the pollution charts in 2013, the city’s first response was almost defiant. There was a belief that pollution only sickened the city’s expatriate population.

“There was a strong defiance. ‘I’m born and brought up in Delhi. This doesn’t affect me,’ ” was how people saw the pollution problem, said Mr Jay Kannaiyan, head of SmartAir in India.

“This year, that has gone out the door. Middle-class, even lower-middle-class Indians are looking at air purifiers,’’ he added.

The week after Diwali, when the city saw its most shocking pollution spike in years, the SmartAir office and shop in south Delhi was open all night, with long queues outside the store.

But on other days, when the sun shines and the haze lifts, most people forget about pollution. The masks vanish and the face coverings come off, even though pollution is often still way above government and WHO norms.

“Right now, it is a completely panic-driven market,” says Mr Kannaiyan of SmartAir.

“People are only buying when it is so horrendous that they cannot see their own hand in front of them.” AP