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. 2020 Nov:135:105064.
doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105064. Epub 2020 Jul 3.

Indian agriculture, air pollution, and public health in the age of COVID

A J McDonald  1 , Balwinder-Singh  2 , M L Jat  2 , P Craufurd  3 , J Hellin  4 , N V Hung  4 , A Keil  5 , A Kishore  6 , V Kumar  4 , J L McCarty  7 , P Pearson  8 , A Samaddar  4 , P Shyamsundar  9 , P B Shirsath  10 , H S Sidhu  11 , A K Singh  12 , Sudhanshu Singh  13 , A K Srivastava  13 , E Urban  1 , R K Malik  2 , B Gerard  14
Affiliations

Indian agriculture, air pollution, and public health in the age of COVID

A J McDonald et al. World Dev. 2020 Nov.

Abstract

Emerging evidence supports the intuitive link between chronic health conditions associated with air pollution and the vulnerability of individuals and communities to COVID-19. Poor air quality already imposes a highly significant public health burden in Northwest India, with pollution levels spiking to hazardous levels in November and early December when rice crop residues are burned. The urgency of curtailing the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigating a potential resurgence later in the year provides even more justification for accelerating efforts to dramatically reduce open agricultural burning in India.

Keywords: Agricultural sustainability; Comorbidities; Crop residue burning; NW India; Rural-urban nexus.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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