New Delhi: Every breath a child takes in India carries a silent risk. New research shows that nearly half of the toxic PM2.5 particles children inhale slip past the body’s defences and lodge in the deepest folds of their lungs—where they stay the longest and do the most damage.

According to a Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) study, 40 per cent of the PM2.5 children inhaled travelled to the deepest part of the lungs. The infants are also affected by this. Both children and infants have a deep-lung deposition rate of 30 per cent for PM2.5, which is significantly higher than for PM10, making it a more hazardous pollutant for children and infants than PM10.

“In my peer-reviewed study done in 2019, eight-to-nine-year-olds had a pulmonary deposition of 0.40, meani

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