Ground-level ozone, the main component of smog, damaged 6.7 million tons of Indian crops worth an estimated $1.3 billion in a single year, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters.
That’s enough wheat, rice and other staple crops to feed 94 million people — roughly one-third of the country’s impoverished population. Arising from a combination of vehicle emissions, cooking stoves, and industrial sources, plant-damaging ozone has left many of India’s fast-developing cities among the most polluted in the world, according to the country’s Air Monitoring Center.
The number of vehicles there has nearly tripled in the past 10 years, rising from 50 million in 2003 to 130 million in 2013, and the country currently has no air quality standards to protect crops from ozone pollution. The researchers say the findings should be used to guide new ozone emission standards for the country.
It is the dream of many urban planners to remove all the cars clogging the city streets. Who wants fast-moving, loud, heavy chunks of steel polluting the air and endangering people crossing the street? Some cities, such as London, have implemented a congestion toll on any vehicles entering the city center. Now there is a new group in the United