Posted on 11/11/2017 3:33:50 PM PST by BenLurkin
Citing toxic smog that one official said has turned India’s capital city into a “gas chamber,” United Airlines has canceled flights to New Delhi until the air gets better.
At least in United’s eyes, the Indian capital’s smog concerns are on par with environmental disasters such as hurricanes and volcanoes — a risk to be avoided. The company said it was letting passengers switch flights without charge or helping them find seats on other carriers.
It was unclear if other airlines would follow suit. Virgin Atlantic, KLM and Etihad Airlines all compete for business to New Delhi, according to CNN Money. An advisory on United’s website said travel to New Delhi was suspended through at least Monday.
New Delhi’s air quality is consistently ranked among the world’s worst. But a perfect storm of problems is exacerbating the problem to potentially deadly levels. Farmers who have recently harvested crops in neighboring states are illegally burning their fields, sending smoke into the air. Construction projects and pollution from vehicles in a city that lacks adequate public transportation are making things worse.
This week, the smog was 10 times worse than reigning pollution champion Beijing, where air-quality problems have reached Olympic proportions. Some parts of New Delhi have pollution 40 times the World Health Organization-recommended safe level.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I wouldn’t want to live there.
Mumbai 20 years, clean t-shirt over my face soaked with bottled water. Never saw one bird in the city. Had to retreat to the mountains to find somewhat clean air. At the time, New Delhi was not bad. Would never return.
New Delhi is mostly Hindu, not Muslim.
I’m shaking something maybe akin to bronchitis.
I feel fine but still have some hard coughing every so often. It’s decreased a lot.
The other thing probably not helping is a lot of dust from getting ready to move. Decades of dust in some corners.
“Adequate public transportation” I’ve seen numerous images of Indian trains with hundreds of Indians on the roof and hanging off the sides. Seems adequate to me.
Yeah, Beijing is one nasty place. There was an article a few years ago about an artist that would make bricks out of the particulates that he pulled from the air with a vacuum cleaner.
What’s in India is another sort of ‘smell’ and it’s not coming from factory smog.
Well...yeah, OK. Too broad a brush there, got it. But fact is there are roughly as many Muslims in India as in Pakistan.
And what city in America wouldn’t trade their Muslim problem for an equal number of peaceable Hindus, if welcoming the one group meant deporting the other?
But the reality remains that Delhi is a grossly overpopulated smelly smoggy place, no matter who is living there.
Perhaps aircraft maintenance or accelerated degradation issues arise from a pollutants / moisture combination?
Nothing worse than curry farts.
Rancid, pants-splitting curry farts. And massive amounts of BO
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