Air pollution, particularly particulate matter, is a mixture of various substances suspended in the air, including harmless ones like soil dust and sea salt, as well as toxic ones like lead and heavy metals. These particles, smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, can enter the lungs and circulation, reaching different organs to cause harm. Inorganic compounds like sulphates and nitrates from vehicular and coal emissions add to the harmful mix.
"One [outrageous example of air pollution] is municipal waste burning that happens in many cities in the Global South. Basically, this is waste that gets collected from people's homes, and instead of being transported to a waste management facility or a landfill or something, gets burned at some point, because that's the fastest way to dispose of it — which really points to poor delivery of public services. But this is ubiquitous in virtually every small- or even medium-sized city. It happens in larger cities too, in this part of the world.
"That's something that truly annoys me, because it feels like the kind of thing that ought to be fairly easily managed, but it happens a lot. It happens because people presumably don't think that it's particularly harmful. I don't think it saves a tonne of money for the municipal corporations and other local government that are meant to manage it. I find it particularly annoying simply because it happens so often; it's something that you're able to smell in so many different parts of these cities." — Santosh Harish
In today’s episode, host Rob Wiblin interviews Santosh Harish — leader of Open Philanthropy’s grantmaking in South Asian air quality — about the scale of the harm caused by air pollution.
Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.
They cover:
- How bad air pollution is for our health and life expectancy
- The different kinds of harm that particulate pollution causes
- The strength of the evidence that it damages our brain function and reduces our productivity
- Whether it was a mistake to switch our attention to climate change and away from air pollution
- Whether most listeners to this show should have an air purifier running in their house right now
- Where air pollution in India is worst and why, and whether it's going up or down
- Where most air pollution comes from
- The policy blunders that led to many sources of air pollution in India being effectively unregulated
- Why indoor air pollution packs an enormous punch
- The politics of air pollution in India
- How India ended up spending a lot of money on outdoor air purifiers
- The challenges faced by foreign philanthropists in India
- Why Santosh has made the grants he has so far
- And plenty more
Chapters:
- Cold open (00:00:00)
- Rob's intro (00:01:07)
- How bad is air pollution? (00:03:41)
- Quantifying the scale of the damage (00:15:47)
- Effects on cognitive performance and mood (00:24:19)
- How do we really know the harms are as big as is claimed? (00:27:05)
- Misconceptions about air pollution (00:36:56)
- Why don’t environmental advocacy groups focus on air pollution? (00:42:22)
- How listeners should approach air pollution in their own lives (00:46:58)
- How bad is air pollution in India in particular (00:54:23)
- The trend in India over the last few decades (01:12:33)
- Why aren’t people able to fix these problems? (01:24:17)
- Household waste burning (01:35:06)
- Vehicle emissions (01:42:10)
- The role that courts have played in air pollution regulation in India (01:50:09)
- Industrial emissions (01:57:10)
- The political economy of air pollution in northern India (02:02:14)
- Can philanthropists drive policy change? (02:13:42)
- Santosh’s grants (02:29:45)
- Examples of other countries that have managed to greatly reduce air pollution (02:45:44)
- Career advice for listeners in India (02:51:11)
Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
Technical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuire
Transcriptions: Katy Moore
