Air quality: New Delhi bad enough to take your breath away

New Delhi is an extreme example of the dangers associated with poor air quality.

An Indian schoolgirl wears a mask to fight pollution and participate in a demonstration to demand clean air in New Delhi. Picture: AP

Last weekend, United Airlines suspended flights to India because of pollution in New Delhi. If planes can’t land in the city, you can imagine what it is like to live there. New Delhi is an extreme example of the dangers associated with poor air quality. Even in Australia, natural events such as bushfires and storms can trigger respiratory problems, and smog is only one of the man-made airborne threats to our health.

Diseases caused by pollution were responsible for an estimated nine million premature deaths in 2015 — 16 per cent of all deaths worldwide. According to University of Queensland researcher Peter Sly, a commissioner with the Lancet Global Commission on Pollution and Health, low and middle-income countries had the most deaths, with children highly represented.

“If you look at this from a public health policy perspective, that’s more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and more than 15 times more than all wars and other forms of violence,” Sly says. “Children are at high risk, and even low-dose exposure in utero and early infancy can result in disease, disability and death in childhood and across the lifespan.”

A year ago in Melbourne, nine people died and thousands more suffered respiratory symptoms in an unexpected thunderstorm asthma event.

NSW Health director of environmental health Ben Scalley says people with asthma need to be aware that pollen at this time of the year can make symptoms worse.

“While Sydney hasn’t had a major event like Melbourne, thunderstorm asthma events have been significant in other parts of NSW in recent years, including Wagga Wagga,” Scalley says. “If you have asthma, spring is an important time to make sure you have an asthma action plan and are proactively managing your symptoms.”

If someone is having an asthma attack, sit them upright, give four separate puffs from their reliever puffer and wait four minutes. If there’s no improvement, give four more puffs. If there’s still no improvement dial triple-0.

Babies who develop severe respiratory illness before the age of two are at least double the risk of developing asthma later in childhood.

A study of all children born in NSW between 2000 and 2010 has shown the increased risk of asthma following respiratory syncytial viral disease, with children born preterm and indigenous children highly represented.

Australia has a high prevalence of pediatric asthma compared with other developed countries. In 2014, two-thirds of the hospital presentations for children aged one to 17 involved asthma.

Actor John Jarratt is featuring in a new National Asbestos Awareness campaign, in part to honour a friend and fellow actor, Harold Hopkins, who died from mesothelioma caused by inhaling asbestos fibres when he was young.

“Each week 13 Australians die of asbestos-related diseases — 12 from malignant mesothelioma — and another 13 are diagnosed with this incurable cancer that can develop 20 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos fibres,” says Jarratt. “There is no cure and the average survival time is just 10 to 12 months after diagnosis.”

Tradies and homeowners are at risk from products thought to be in one-third of all homes built or renovated before 1987. A recent review in the Medical Journal of Australia found that while data was kept on mesothelioma, less was known about other occupational lung diseases.

Women aged 65 and older are nearly three times likelier to die from asthma than men their age. “The demographic statistics over the past few years have indicated that older women are consistently at the highest risk of dying from asthma,” says Jonathan Burdon, chairman of the National Asthma Council Australia. “This could be due to a combination of lifestyle and contributing health factors. To combat this phenomenon, it’s imperative that women make sure their asthma is well managed and treated as they get older.”

Research has found that nearly 40 per cent of people with asthma use only reliever medicines, and a quarter of them have been forced to seek last-minute treatment for a dangerous flare-up.