Bengaluru: There is enough evidence and data to show that there is a strong association between air pollution and not only lung diseases, but also several other serious health issues, several medical doctors and researchers told The Wire.This is contradictory to what the minister of state for environment, forest and climate change, Kirti Vardhan Singh, submitted to parliament in a written response on December 18.Singh had said that there is “no conclusive data” to establish a “direct correlation between higher AQI levels and lung diseases”.There is a lot of data globally to show that air pollution is strongly associated with poor lung health – and the World Health Organisation too recognises this, said Dr Vijay Hadda, pulmonologist at AIIMS Delhi.Hadda said that a study conducted by AIIMS itself, by its then-head of the medicine department Dr G.N. Pandey, and published in 2002 in the Indian Journal of Chest Disease and Allied Sciences, showed that the number of emergency visits increased during times of higher air pollution.“Yes absolutely, we still see this trend,” Hadda said when asked if the pattern still holds more than two decades later.“In the majority of patients coming in now, sneezing, COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], asthma, is caused by bad air. Multiple studies show that bad air and poor AQI worsen lung health and increased incidents of COPD, unplanned visits and admission to emergency and ICU care,” he added.Another, more recent study also conducted at AIIMS between 2017 and 2019 and published in 2023 found a “significant association” between concentrations of air pollutants (NO2, PM2.5 and CO) and emergency visits for all acute respiratory symptoms in adults too.“Our results show that NO2 and PM2.5 levels are associated with an increase in emergency visits for acute respiratory symptoms among adults from Delhi, India,” the study noted.There is “definite evidence” at a global level to show that PM2.5 and air pollution affects not only respiratory health but also causes numerous other health hazards, said Dr Naveen Thacker, executive director of the International Pediatric Association and a member of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics.Children, he said, are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of air pollution due to airway size and other factors.“As paediatricians we see a lot of respiratory issues, coughs, colds and wheezing in children. This is definitely higher during winter months when pollution is higher,” he said.It is time that we also look beyond Delhi and address this as a national problem, Thacker said.“No action is not an option. We know air pollution is an issue. We have to start working on this,” Thacker added. “There has to be a uniform, nation-wide institutional response.”There should be a nationwide system in place to issue advisories based on the level of pollution so that the most vulnerable – like children, the elderly and people with existing medical conditions – can take precautionary measures.Solutions such as using masks (which are very effective in limiting exposure to fine particulate matter), and even considering installing HEPA filters in classrooms would go a long way, he added.Air pollution is a systemic toxicant and affects not only lungs, but impacts birth weight, cardiovascular health and causes long term or short term effects, said a leading scientist and medical researcher who has worked for four decades on air pollution and its health impacts, and conducted studies funded by the government of India that have been published in leading peer-reviewed journals. The latter is why the researcher did not want to be named.“The fact that air pollution affects human health is an indisputable one. It is similar to how contaminated drinking water leads to gastrointestinal issues,” the researcher said.“If we saw something that shows that there are no benefits from air pollution control, we as a community of health researchers would have told this a long time ago,” the researcher said.“There is enough evidence from most parts of the world to implement a global standard. That is what our Indian standard is also based on. Our Indian standard is a health-based standard. If we believe that there are no health impacts, we would not have had a standard in the first place.”The connection between air pollution and lung diseases has always been “well-accepted and understood”, the researcher said. And now there is evidence that air pollution affects human health beyond lungs.“These are things we did not know before. But now we have home-grown evidence to support not only [a link between air pollution and] lung diseases, but even COPD. Ask any lung physician, they will tell you they have seen so much COPD amongst non-smokers. Why? Smoking was the only risk factor we knew many years ago,” the health researcher said.