A blanket of toxic air covers New Delhi
Toxic air covered New Delhi on Saturday as pollution levels remained dangerously high for a second day in a row after revelers defied a government ban on fireworks during a major Hindu festival and after farmers burned their crop residues in two neighboring states.
The Air Quality Index (AQI) in New Delhi, which measures the degree of air pollution, rose to 456 on a scale of 500, indicating "severe" pollution conditions that negatively affect healthy people and pose serious risks to those with sick cases.
The air quality index measures the level of toxic fine particles (PM2.5) in the air per cubic meter of air, which can cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases such as lung cancer.
Residents complained on social media about the dangerous conditions in New Delhi, which has the worst air quality in all capitals of the world.
An annual increase in air pollution often occurs early in the winter.
"The pollution in Delhi makes it very difficult to live in this city or at least to live here for a long time," Pratiyush Singh, who lives in the city, said on Twitter.
"We breathe smoke every day," he said.
Toxic air kills more than a million people in India each year and has a bad economic impact on the densely populated northern states and the capital where 20 million live.
The current pollution levels in New Delhi were caused by fireworks on the night of the Hindu festival of Diwali on Thursday, as well as by burning of crop residues in the farm belt surrounding the city, says the monitoring system of the Federal Ministry of Geosciences.
Farmers in the neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana set fire to harvested crop residues to prepare their fields for the next crop.
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