Notes from inside Northern India's toxic winter

_{It reached in the high 500s last week}

Right now, pollution in Northern India is high. It happens every year around this time, is getting worse and yet, there is no respite because the stakeholders live in fancy bungalows with ultra high-end air purifiers paid for by taxes. Why would they care?

Not all of us are well enough to purchase an air purifier for each room. And continuous exposure to air pollution has started affecting my otherwise okay health. This had never happened before, not in my school days, or when I went down to a different city to complete my undergrad or even a different country for my postgrad. But for the past two-three years, November brings with itself a pretty much guaranteed throat and respiratory tract irritation.

Sick days? more like weeks.

I don't know how much PM2.5 or PM10 did I inhale to make my immune system weaker. I read that constant exposure to hazardous air has other side-effects too and I see most of them in these months - headache, throat infection, dry coughing, nausea, suuccestibility to viral infection to name a few. It's not just me either. I am seeing people my age and even younger healthy adults become ill with this new genre or pollution-based sickness in recent times. Last year it went on for almost a month and a half. I haven't been able to do anything for the past 4-5 days and its started sucking really bad.

I wear an N-95 mask when I go out but I can't be wearing it at home all the time. I'm currently down with really bad coughing and here are some steps I started to limit my exposure to this gam-chamber I am doomed to live in.

• Close the windows and door shut, especially in the mornings and evenings. This is when the smog is at its peak. I usually check the AQI values on my phone to keep track. It's become a sort of habit now.
• Wet mopping instead of dry dusting. The latter just relaunches the particles into the air (resuspension). Wet mopping traps hopefully them and is better.
• Drinking lots of fluids and water to keep myself hydrated. When I googled on simple ways to help my body fight pollution, this came as a recommendation.
• Sealing the crevices to my doors. In a high AQI zone, infiltration is the enemy. By sealing the gaps with damp cloths, I try to create a positive pressure seal or at least a neutral seal. Hopefully that traps incoming particulates in the wet fabric before they enter the room.
• Another experiment I tried in the past was hanging a wet bedsheet near the curtains on the window. It supposedly increased moositure content in the room and attracted dust and particulate matter. Now, I don't know if the science works or not but I'm putting it here in any case.
• This is mostly me experimenting but I read about wet deposition online and have tried to replicate it my room. I filled a spray bottle with clean tap water and mist the room at regular intervals and then wipe the surfaces clean. I don't know how effective this is, since I don't own an AQI measure device. However its based on my reading that in atmospheric science, rain cleans the air. The water droplets collide with the PM2.5 (dust/pollution), capture them and because the water is heavier, it drags the pollution down to the floor which I then mop off.

Of course, #6 doesnt work if the room is otherwise not sealed and new air constantly comes in. These tips are based on suggestions of various people and I try all of them. Hey its better than nothing right? Let's see how much of a difference this makes before the AQI starts improving.