s Lahore welcomes the winter season, it does so with hot bowls of soup and chicken broths to recover from the multiple nasal and throat troubles caused by the preceding month or two of smog. The most common complaints remain dry cough and flu-like symptoms, with or without fever.

Nadia Iqbal, a daily commuter, finds it “strange how suddenly without any apparent reason my eyes started to get itchy recently. Soon after, I had a dry cough which scared me.

“I didn’t want to fall sick with Covid,” she says. It helped to know that she didn’t have the virus but something ‘seasonal.’ She probed it further, and was told that it had to do with the bad air quality the city was experiencing.

Smog has been awful this year too. The skies look murky all day long, and everything else around us seems to fade into view as if through a haze that just wouldn’t dissipate. Visibility is hampered which affects those driving, especially during the night and early morning. Above all, it’s simply scary to know that we are breathing ‘hazardous’ air.

On IQAir’s real-time assessment of the world’s most polluted cities, Lahore routinely figures at the top. For the uninitiated, the air quality indices (AQI) are calculated on the basis of five categories of pollution: ground-level ozone, particulate matter (PM2.5), carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. At the time of writing this article — in the afternoon of November 9 — the concentration of PM2.5 in Lahore was 33.9 times the WHO annual air quality guideline value.

Aabgeen Ali, who studied environmental sciences at Kinnaird College, explains the phenomenon in the following words: “The smog [in Lahore] is largely due to vehicular emissions, industrial emissions, brick kilns and the burning of crop residue.”

She believes that although the government imposed a ban on burning crops it didn’t properly enforce it. Furthermore, there are EPA guidelines and environmental laws that regulate motor vehicles. For instance, Section 15 of the Punjab Environmental Protection Act, 1997 states that “no person shall operate a motor vehicle from which air pollutants or noise are being emitted in an amount, concentration or level which is in excess of the [Punjab] Environmental Quality Standards…” Sadly, no compliance of the law is to be seen.

Section 15 of the Punjab Environmental Protection Act, 1997 states that “no person shall operate a motor vehicle from which air pollutants or noise are being emitted in an amount, concentration or level which is in excess of the [Punjab] Environmental Quality Standards…” Sadly, no compliance of the law is to be seen.

The situation poses a challenge not only to the citizens but to the medical practitioners too. Hospitals and clinics are said to receive an increasing number of patients with complaints that range from difficulty in breathing to congestion and throat infections.

Dr Zarmeen Fatima, who has a day job at Arif Memorial Hospital, talks to TNS of “an abnormal influx of patients this time around.” She elaborates, “Environment is taking a toll on public health. We usually ask patients if they’re suffering from a dry cough or productive (wet). During winters, if you’re suffering from dry cough, the first suspicion we have is that it’s because of the smog.”

Dr Fatima stresses the need to take precautions, as smog does not look likely to be over for good. “Mask up, especially when stepping out of the house. We all got used to it [mask-wearing] in the early days of the pandemic, but now again nobody seems to care.”

Prevention is definitely a good idea, and that’s something everyone should actively work towards. The air affects us. But it isn’t until we fall sick that we are compelled to choose the safer path.

It is ironic how Lahore, the fabled city of gardens, is condemned to experience such awful levels of air pollution. But that is the reality. As Lahore gained in population, it also grew as an industrial city. With much of the industrial city in close proximity to the residential areas, a lot went wrong with our urban planning. Eventually, it is the 13.5 million people who inhabit the city who have been affected.

The writer is based in Lahore and currently works at COLABS