Michael Tauberg is a senior Columnist with ProgressiveBrief.com. We discussed his article Trump Administration Corruption Doesn’t Excuse the Bidens.

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Air pollution in India is off the scale.

That sounds like a rhetorical flourish, but

it isn’t. It’s literally the truth.

Most cities around the world, including in

India, have sensors which monitor the levels of various pollutants, but one of

the most important to monitor is called PM10s and PM2.5s. I won’t get into the

technicalities but that’s basically a particle so small that our nasal hairs,

the mucus on our airways and the other ways that our bodies have evolved to

deal with impurities in the air, are unable to stop. We have no natural defenses

against them.

And they’re bad.

Breathing elevated levels of these

particles is associated with a whole range health problems including bronchial asthma,

chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, interstitial pneumonia and birth

defects, and they are listed as a grade 1 carcinogen, the worst type.

They can come from a variety of sources

including diesel engines, power plants, agricultural burning and domestic fires

for heating and cooking. They are estimated to cause up to 50,000 deaths

per year in the United States, and more

than a third of a million deaths per year in Europe, which is more densely

populated.

There is a scale that

basically measures how polluted the air is, it counts how many particles

are in each cubic meter of air, anything under 50 is good, under 100 is

satisfactory, between 200 and 300 is poor and there’s a warning with that it “may cause breathing discomfort to people on

prolonged exposure, and discomfort to people with heart disease”.

Not nice, but it’s not the worst. Between 300

and 400, very poor air quality “may cause