For the past fewmonths Hasan Zaidi's phone has been ringing nonstop with calls from desperateresidents in Pakistan hoping to get their hands on his newly invented airpurifier as smog blankets the country. "Some days, I had so many callsthat I couldn't answer," says Zaidi during a recent interview with AFP inhis workshop. Tired of choking on putrid air, Zaidi spent six months perfectinghis homemade device as he looked for a low-cost solution to battle theincreasingly toxic scourge overwhelming Pakistan.
During this winter alone the 31-year-old engineer has already sold some 500units, which are priced at just 16,000 Pakistani rupees ($103), but admits torefusing hundreds of orders in recent weeks due to lack of manpower andresources. In cash-strapped Pakistan Zaidi's "Indoor Forest"purifiers are cheaper than imported models, which typically cost about two tofive times more. "Now it is less of a luxury and more of anecessity," explains Sadia Khan, whose company Autosoft Dynamics recentlyacquired a dozen of Zaidi's purifiers so his 180 employees can "breathesafely".
135,000 deaths
In the past five years, air pollution has worsened in Pakistan, as a mixture oflow-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal crop burn off, and colder wintertemperatures coalesce into stagnant clouds of smog. In 2015, 135,000 Pakistanisdied due to poor air quality, according to a study published in the scientificjournal The Lancet. Pollution tends to be at its worst in the country's easternprovince of Punjab during winter, particularly in the 12-million strong city ofLahore near the border with India.
In November schools were closed for several days across the province with thelevel of PM2.5 - tiny particles that get into the bloodstream and vital organs- repeatedly exceeding 200 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The World HealthOrganization's recommended safe daily maximum is a measurement of 25. Pakistanis ranked one of the worst countries in the world for air quality and Lahoreconsistently ranked in the top 10 most smog-hit cities, according to thepollution monitoring site AirVisual.
But Tanveer Waraich, director general of the Punjab's environmental agency,dismisses those figures, saying pollution readings cited by monitors andactivists are not from "authentic machines". "To say thatPakistan and Lahore are among the top polluted cities... this statement is notbased on facts," he says, but concedes the country's air quality islargely unacceptable. Public awareness about the issue is growing due toincreased activism on social media about the dangers of pollution and the direchallenges climate change is bringing to Pakistan.
Yann Boquillod, who co-founded AirVisual, said subscribers to the site fromPakistan have increased tenfold this year. "In Pakistan, there was aproblem but no one knew about it. Pakistanis are (now) mobilising,"Boquillod says.
'Gas chamber'
With officials slow to act, ordinary Pakistanis have increasingly takenmeasures into their own hands. In 2016, Abid Omar launched the websitePakistanAirQuality (PAQ) dedicated to compiling data about air pollution in thecountry and publishing its findings. According to PAQ, Lahore only experienced"10 hours" of good quality air based on WHO standards during thefirst eleven months of 2019. Conversely, air quality in the city oscillatedbetween "bad" and "hazardous" for a total of 223 days sofar this year. The smog "has made our lives miserable," laments apedestrian in Lahore buying a mask.
Pressure on officials is building. Ahmad Rafay Alam, one of the fewenvironmental lawyers in Pakistan, filed a suit against the Punjab provincialgovernment on behalf of his daughter and two other teenagers in November,saying officials having underreported the problem. Outside of activism andlawsuits, others are trying to minimize their exposure to the harmful toxins inthe air.
"Last year, it was just bizarre how everybody seemed not concerned,"says Ayza Omar, director of interiorsource.pk, a site offering high-qualityface masks and other anti-smog products. "This year, it has been crazy. Wewere sold out within the first two months," she adds, saying they soldthousands of masks this year compared to dozens last year.
In an attempt to improve the situation in Lahore, a group of environmentalistsare planning to unveil an eight-metre-high air purifier in attempt to removeharmful particles from the air. MaryamSaeed, one of the designers, says of the device: "It will help to ease theproblem, but it won't change the whole picture." - AFP