Air pollution sucking life out of Karachi, warn experts

Karachi has become the most polluted city in the world, beating Lahore and Delhi, as per the latest Air Quality Index.

The Karachi Citizens’ Forum highlighted this during a press conference on ‘Karachi’s ignored toxic air quality, and the mounting health toll’, at the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) House on Monday.

The forum included people from the judiciary, medical fraternity, urban planners and air quality experts. In their joint statement, they said Karachi in the last few weeks has earned another demeaning ranking in international indices. In the last decade, it has been in the top ten of the least livable cities in the world, very high in all kinds of environmental pollution, with the worst transport system.

In the last few years, the statement said, it was fluttering in the top ten Air Quality index air polluted cities of the world. “But in the latest report, it has achieved the distinction of the most air polluted city in the world, beating Lahore and Delhi.”

Co-convener Karachi Citizen Forum Dr Qaiser Sajjad said that one fails to understand why the premier city of Pakistan, its first capital, a city by the sea, should be reduced to such a disgraceful status. He said that Pakistan’s constitution state that a clean environment is a fundamental right of all citizens, under the provision that guarantee “right to life” and “right to dignity”.

Due to air pollution, an alarmingly high number of diseases and deaths take place, plus mental and physical stunting, and life span is reduced by five to six years. In Pakistan, according to a 2015 report published by the medical journal Lancet, nearly 22 per cent of annual deaths are caused by air pollution, especially of those in the lower and middle income groups, living in the shanty towns and the ghettoes where the infrastructure is in an acute state of rot.

The worst affected are children, students, factory workers and those who travel on dangerously high fuel-emitting buses, rickshaws, motorcycles. They are 70 per cent of the residents of Karachi, who can ill- afford this high health toll and financial loss in medical cost.

Air quality expert Yaseer Husain shared how serious the air quality problem is. He also showed the worst air quality areas of Karachi. Urban planner Muhammad Toheed explained the causes of this morbid air quality, and its close relationship to a broken down infrastructure, and terrible solid waste disposal and sanitation practices.

In 2018, a law suit was filed by advocate Venu G. Advani challenging the government’s failure to control air pollution in the port city. He sought to have air quality regulation enforced in the country, hoping that the court would ensure “provision of the constitutional right to a clean environment, for which clean air is the key”.

It was shared in the press briefing how then chief justice Saqib Nisar, head of a three-member high court panel, said he was shocked how dirty the air had become in Pakistan’s cities. The judicial panel ruled that the government must provide details of what it was doing to curb air pollution across the country.

This ruling spurred government authorities into action to try to reduce pollution levels, fearing they could face court orders or sanctions. The Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency started installing air quality monitors, and warned factories to add pollution filters. As many as seven fixed and three mobile ambient air quality monitoring stations have been set up in Karachi.

In 2019, petitioner advocate Venu Kumar Adwani complained to the Supreme Court that despite judicial orders, no steps were being taken to control air pollution, especially coal consumption and coal- loading vehicles. In December 2022, before December 6, air quality reading was 151 to 186. The seven air quality monitors installed by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) at different locations in the city were not being monitored properly, and the two air quality monitors of the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) installed on the rooftops had been both lying dysfunctional for the last three years, shared Husain.

Sajjad emphasised that the health of the people was not a priority of the government. The deteriorating air quality, he said, is slow poison and a lot of people are dying because of it in the city.

“In order to live, we need fresh air,” he said, adding that in Karachi’s air there is a lot of toxic gasses: carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, lead and sulphur oxide. The city, he said, does not have a system and there is dearth of research in the health sector. Since we are continuously inhaling toxic gases, he said, the life expectancy of the people of Karachi is reducing. There is vehicular pollution, factory gasses, fumes of garbage burning which include domestic and medical waste.