Driving through Delhi’s near-500 AQI, as I took off my face mask…

A doctor once told me that particulate matter (PM) measurement in Ukraine at the February 2022 start of the war with Russia was an average 24.2 µg/m3 (micrograms per cubic meter). This November 18, Delhi’s average PM2.5 (particulate matter under 2.5 microns) reading was almost 10 times this figure—at 237 µg/m³.
Indeed, the National Capital Region (NCR), comprising Delhi and surrounding cities such as Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurugram and Faridabad, did feel very much like a war zone in the early hours on the day—a blinding smog, black soot on pavements and a carpet of dust, laden with early-winter moisture, sticking onto stationary cars.
Around 7 am on a day when Delhi reported an average AQI (air quality index) level of 494 (‘severe-plus’ range), I decided to drive a full circuit of NCR with my face mask on and my car air purifier turned to full power. My eyes could not see particulate matter due to their microscopic size, but combined with various gases, these particles had enveloped the whole of Delhi in a thick layer of grey gas. I wanted to know: could such high levels of air toxicity be felt?
I stepped out of my car on the Faridabad-Gurugram Road and took off my mask. It felt like entering a congested, poorly ventilated, smoking room of a restaurant. But the strange thing is that within 10 minutes, my sense of smell had adjusted to the smoke and it felt far less powerful than it had at the start.
“You can get used to the smell of burning to some extent, so the first exposure is the most noticeable. But the silent impact on your body, especially from some of the odourless gases, is still ongoing,” Dr Nitish Khanna, a pulmonologist from Mumbai, had once told me.
When I reentered my car, the brief 10-second opening of the door caused the AQI (determined by both PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations in the air) inside to shoot from 68 to 390. The impact of that exposure to Delhi’s air didn’t end there. I found my throat was scratchy, my eyes were burning and there was a gritty feeling in my teeth and around the top of my nose, as though I had been rolling around in sand. I returned home after another hour of driving through the haze, stretches of which were so thick that I couldn’t see beyond the bonnet of my car.
My friends find it hilarious that I had long ago dipped into my life’s savings to invest in giant air purifiers for my home. They say it is a result of spending too much time conversing with doctors who love to spread fear. There is always defiance when I try to argue against such logic; almost as if we are breathing lethal gases into our bodies accepting the hopelessness of our lives today.
“I am seeing 30-year-olds come in with lung cancer when they have never smoked. Not everyone will develop cancer, but the risk of it and other diseases is spiralling with this kind of air,” I was told by Delhi-based oncologist Dr Manish Singhal, who also said we should be fighting tooth and nail for our right to breathe clean air.
But in reality, we talk about air pollution more on WhatsApp and dinner party tables than we do about fighting for a visible change. “Nothing will happen. Tomorrow it will all be forgotten again,” a friend, who works with an international bank in Delhi, tells me through her mask. It’s easy for her to forget that she spends nine months a year in Europe.
Some doctors say people are sceptical because the health impact is slow and takes time to show up in otherwise healthy individuals. As Dr Singhal says: “As long as we get through another day unharmed, nobody will take it seriously.”
But I feel we don’t need to fall sick to realise we are in a deeply problematic situation. I don’t know if my 15-minute exposure to an AQI level that would shut down any city in the developed world is going to give me cancer, brain issues, heart issues, fertility issues or early death. But I do know it felt markedly different than standing on a road in Delhi ever had—it was suffocating, blinding and depressing.
I also know from personal experience the effect the air has on senior citizens. “We packed and left Delhi for our home in the hills before Diwali. It is a shame, but last year I had suffered four asthma attacks because of the pollution. All our friends are also looking for homes in other cleaner areas. This is what money is now meant for—to find clean air,” Karuna Bagchi, 88, a friend’s mother, told me.
The worst thing I know about the air in this city is what I had seen at the end of my drive on November 18. At a bus stop on Outer Ring Road, very close to the cafes and pubs of posh Hauz Khas, a middle-aged woman was attempting to breast-feed an infant. I was at a traffic blockage where police, wearing thin papery masks, were trying their best to do their job. I could observe the mother for a few minutes. The child just kept coughing and crying, choking so severely on the air that he couldn’t latch on for milk.
It is difficult to know exactly how much exposure to such toxic air is enough to cause which health problem. Maybe I will be one of the lucky ones who will escape with no impact at all. Maybe the clean air inside my home is enough to balance out the effect of pollution outside. But I will never feel lucky because the truth is my home sits within a toxic gas chamber for a quarter of the year.
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