Translating health concerns into air quality regulations

A CSE roundtable provokes a debate on the urgent need for health assessments to drive government regulations on air pollution

Sunita Narain (left), director, CSE and DR Shankar Prasad (right), advisor to the chairman, California Air Resources Board.	Dr Robert O'Keefe (left), vice-president, and Dr Daniel Greenbaum (right), president, of Boston-based Health Effects Institute at the roundtable meet.

November 22, 2002, New Delhi: Whereas the West has stringent measures to regulate air pollution, India lags far behind in initiating health impact assessments and policy measures.

Dr Daniel Greenbaum, president, and Dr Robert O’ Keefe, vice president, of Boston-based Health Effects Institute and leading experts in air pollution and health impacts research pushed air quality management and public health concerns into sharp focus at a roundtable organised by the Centre for Science and Environment at the India Habitat Centre on November 22, 2002.

The experts shared experiences and discussed proactive initiatives taken by the US government to regulate air pollution. Dr Shankar Prasad, advisor to the chairman, California Air Resources Board, a global leader in developing stringent emission controls to protect public health, stressed the need to move towards more effective policies that address public health concerns.

Prasad and Greenbaum identified several hurdles in the path towards regulating air pollution in India. These include: incomplete data, weak organisational support, poor understanding and inadequate measurement methods of air pollutants and their health impacts, and the absence of exposure assessments of different population groups.

Challenging the axiom that equates inconclusive evidence with absence of risk in health studies, Prasad pointed out, "No one can deny that air pollution in Delhi is a serious public health problem, and that pollutants cause cancer, aggravate asthmatic attacks, and are responsible for death and life span reduction. It is imperative that we recognise the problem and start acting now before it is too late."

The Health Effects Institute will soon launch the ‘Public Health and Air Pollution in Asia’ initiative, designed to build scientific and technical capacities that will promote systematic health analyses in five Asian cities.

To be undertaken under the World Bank’s Clean Air Initiative of Asian Cities (CAI-Asia) programme, an extensive network of Asian scientists and air quality regulators will enable informed decision-making on air quality standards and accelerate clean vehicular technology and fuel policies