India vs China: Airpocalypse
	Feb. 3, 2015 – Air wickedness in India and China is already a good hazard to tellurian health.  By one estimate, northern Chinese lives are 5.5 years shorter than they should be, all because of tainted air.  The lives of about 700 million Indians would, on average, be more than 3 years longer, if standards for atmosphere peculiarity were met.
One vast problem is indoors: particles from fumes from dung or timber cooking fires, or from paraffin stoves and lamps.  In India indoor atmosphere wickedness is suspected to mean 1 million deaths a year.
But a greater hazard is outside atmosphere pollution, generally in cities.  Air wickedness is caused by trade fumes, industrial emissions, construction dust, blazing balderdash, and more.  It is suspected already to kill about 700,000 Indians a year.  That cost is expected to arise neatly in coming decades.  India’s bad fuel standards, poor-quality vehicles, and badly designed cities help explain how so many cities are choked with awful air.
Even China, scandalous for problems with smog and pollution, appears improved, compared to India.  Michael Greenstone of Chicago University points out that more cities in India (with Delhi a worst, by far) continue really high normal levels of tiny particulate matter famous as PM2.5.  This is quite deadly, as particles settle low in a lungs, causing cancer, heart attacks and strokes.
Air wickedness affects not only a vast number of cities.  Much of northern India, along a Ganges plain, is draped in smoggy atmosphere for vast parts of a year.  This is also bad for crops.  One investigation of wheat yields in India, from 1980 to 2010, suggests these are reduced by 1/3, from what they should be, due to high ozone levels and other atmospheric pollution.
economicworld.net/science-and-technology/environment/india-v-china-airpocalypse/