‘Children who keep coughing’: Pakistan’s record smog forces people to go home | Environmental Affairs

On the streets of Pakistan’s second largest city, the smoke stings the eyes and burns the throat. Inside homes, few people can afford to buy air purifiers to reduce the damage of toxic particles entering through doors and windows.

Lahore, a city of 14 million people dotted with factories, is consistently among the most polluted cities in the world, but it reached its highest level this month.

Schools are closed in major cities of Punjab province, whose capital is Lahore, until November 17 in an effort to reduce children’s exposure to pollution, especially during the morning commute when it is usually at its highest.

“The children are always coughing, they don’t hear each other all the time. In the schools, we saw that most of the children are sick,” said Rafia Iqbal, a 38-year-old primary school teacher in a town on the border with India.

Her husband, Muhammad Safdar, a 41-year-old marketing professional, said the level of pollution “makes everyday life impossible”. “We can’t walk around, we can’t go outside, there’s nothing we can do,” he said.

According to the international Air Quality Index (AQI) scale, an index value of 300 or more is “dangerous” to health and Pakistan consistently tops 1,000 on the scale.

In Multan, another city of a few million people 350 kilometers (217 miles) away, the AQI level exceeded 2,000 last week, a staggering height never seen by disbelieving citizens.

Access to parks, zoos, playgrounds, historical monuments, museums and resorts will be restricted until November 17 and tuk-tuks with polluting two-stroke engines, and restaurants that use grills without filters have been banned from Lahore’s “hot spots”.

A mixture of low-grade fuel emissions from factories and cars, fueled by the burning of agricultural waste, blankets the city every winter, held in place by cooler temperatures and slower winds.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says that air pollution can cause stroke, heart disease, lung cancer and other respiratory diseases. It especially punishes babies, children, and the elderly.

Last year, the Punjab government experimented with artificial rain to try to combat the smog, and this year, trucks with water cannons sprayed the streets, with results. Special counters have been set up to test patients in clinics across the province.

Qurat ul Ain, a hospital doctor for 15 years, sees the damage done to emergency rooms in Lahore. “This year, the smoke is more than previous years and the number of patients suffering from its effects is very high,” he said.

< p> Many came breathing heavily or coughing and with red eyes, mostly old people, children and young men who breathed in toxic air while on the back of motorbikes. “We tell people not to go out unless they wear a mask. We tell them not to touch their eyes with their hands, especially children,” he added.

For days, the concentration of microparticles that pollute PM2.5 in Punjab has been higher than what is considered tolerable by the WHO.

Alia Haider, a climate activist, calls for campaigns to raise awareness among patients who are often unaware of the dangers of secondhand smoke. Children from poor areas, he said, are the first victims because they spend the whole year being polluted by different types of pollution.

“We are stuck in our own poison,” he said. It’s like a gas cloud over the city.”