Published on : 22 Oct 2025, 11:38 am

A cracking Diwali night gave way to a morning full of haze in and around Delhi. While the haze has become a permanent fixture once winter sets in the northern parts of the country, what does data say about how pollution is affecting citizens? Multiple studies have come with different numbers. But all of them point out one thing — it is killing us slowly.

According to a study published in The Lancet Planetary Health in December 2024 titled Estimating the effect of annual PM2·5 exposure on mortality in India: a difference-in-differences approach, researchers directly attributed close to 17 million deaths due to exposure to PM2.5 from 2009 to 2019.

According to the study, “1·1 billion of 1·4 billion (81·9% of the total population) lived in areas

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