In Bhiwadi’s dust bowl, a battle to save lungs

livemint.com:

Bhiwadi: The air inside the outpatient department at ESIC Hospital, Bhiwadi, is weary. Patients slouch on chairs set against the walls along two sides of a large room, awaiting their turn. Two wooden tables pressed together are the centrepiece inside where three doctors, including medical officer Dr Sanju Kurdia, examine around 50 patients every day.

It is Kurdia’s fourth year in Bhiwadi, but the city was far from welcoming. “Within two days of joining, I was down with an upper respiratory tract infection," he remembered. Cues—physical and visual—to being in a critically polluted city were pervasive.

He only had to step out after lunch. “You might have seen a clear sky now. In 2019, we would only see smoke billowing out from all directions at noon.

Dust covered all vehicles, and ash settled on the face," he said. Kurdia is the nodal officer for the national programme on climate change and human health at ESIC and maintains a monthly chart of acute respiratory illness cases reported at the hospital to be shared with the Central Pollution Control Board and other bodies. With the usual suspects—stubble burning, festive season and onset of winter—set to collude with existing factors to worsen the air quality in Bhiwadi, at least 50% of the outpatient department patients over the next few months are bound to manifest respiratory illnesses, he noted.

The clear mid-afternoon October sky Kurdia mentioned is at once hope and consolation for Bhiwadi residents—the first sign of marginal improvement. Over 10 months ago, its coal-powered industries—about 650 of them—went through a stuttering and drawn-out process to substitute coal for cleaner energy sources. An industrial hub at the tail end of the National Capital Region and 70km