Toxic times

摘要

I spend most of my year waiting for January to arrive. It is the peak winter month in Delhi, bringing relief from the heat in the world's second most populous urban area, home to 25 million people. It is a time to reclaim the outdoors. But no more. Delhi is twice as polluted as Beijing. The air is so toxic that I have ended up staying indoors as much as possible. It often contains six to 10 times the internationally accepted upper level for the most harmful fine particles, known as PM_(2.5). These specks of smog can penetrate deep into the lungs and then into the blood. Jogging while trying not to breathe deeply is an impossible task, as I quickly discovered.