00:00All right, joining us next is Professor Dr. Sanjeev Bagai.
00:04He's a Senior Consulted Pediatrician Chairman at the Nephron Clinic.
00:07Hello and welcome, Dr. Bagai.
00:09I don't remember for how many years exactly we've been talking about the same issue.
00:15Year on year, we keep talking about the number of kids who are impacted by air pollution.
00:21Year on year, we've spoken about the pregnant women who are impacted by air pollution.
00:25Year on year, we've spoken about heart being impacted by air pollution, knees being impacted,
00:33you getting, you know, migraine because of air pollution, diabetes because of air pollution.
00:38The list is just endless.
00:40In fact, recently, I met one of the country's top oncologist who said that if you are constantly living in
00:47polluted air,
00:49you are now at high risk of cancer.
00:52Now, these are not scary headlines to tell people.
00:54I want to hear from a doctor like you on how much of it is actually translating into visits in
01:00the clinic.
01:02Good afternoon.
01:04I think it's a sad narrative on comprehensive systemic decay.
01:09Right from policymakers to the implementers to the law enforcement and indeed the society at large.
01:17When you talk in terms of air pollution, we've said this many times over, you know, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
01:24we lost two lakh individuals.
01:27In COVID, over four years, we lost six lakhs Indians.
01:31Every year, we are losing 20 lakh because of air pollution.
01:35Let that sink in.
01:36It's 25 times the effect of mortality of COVID.
01:40And we thought COVID was a pandemic.
01:42This is an actual debacle what we are facing.
01:46So, very quickly, of all the ingredients, be it PM2.5, toxic gases, SOX, NOX, the volatile organic compounds, hydrofluorocarbons,
01:55carcinogens, radioactive materials, heavy metals, oxidized into super ions as micro-nanoplastics.
02:03They form small, little, ultrafine particles which puncture through the lungs.
02:08They reverse the lung flow, enter into the bloodstream, cross the blood-brain barrier, damage every organ possible, including your
02:16bone marrow and indeed your DNA.
02:18What happens in your DNA is that either your methylation, that means your metabolism of your DNA goes up so
02:26much or down so much that your DNA chromosomes start breaking.
02:30Once those chromosomes are broken or damaged, then your generations are lost to come forward.
02:36We have seen this with early pregnancies, still births.
02:40We've seen this with premature deliveries.
02:42We've seen it with children being born with congenital heart disease as two times the increased risk.
02:48Absent limbs.
02:49Can you believe children being born with absent fingers or indeed absent upper arm?
02:54We have been seeing that children can be born with one kidney instead of two or an abnormally placed urinary
03:00bladder or indeed facial dysmorphism.
03:03We've seen children who are at high risk of developing leukemia after birth.
03:07Even after the farm fires stop, individuals who have been exposed to it, that means us in Delhi,
03:15we are at risk of cancer for 20 years because that's the time it takes to heal the body.
03:21So we need to do something.
03:23We need to do something as per yesterday, but we need to act very quickly.
03:27Every one month of exposure increases the risk only by 10 micrograms of PM 2.5.
03:33And here we have crossed 3,700 in Delhi.
03:37When we are looking at 10 micrograms increase, the risk of CA breast increases by 20%.
03:42So what we are going to actually see amongst all the other abnormalities is huge amount of chronic diseases coming
03:49up.
03:49There will be a burst of cancers all over.
03:52Their children are being born now with anemia.
03:54The bone marrows are getting destroyed.
03:56The heart, the silent heart attacks, the strokes, dementia by 63% increase.
04:02And all these ingredients cause what we call as oxidative stress.
04:06So these are inflammatory molecules.
04:08They go through the bloodstream.
04:10They activate your genes.
04:11I'll just take 15 seconds in this.
04:14If your PM 2.5 is placed at 46 micrograms, that means just double of what WHO limit is,
04:21you activate.
04:23That means your genes get hyperactive of 540.
04:27Now increase this to 96 micrograms.
04:30That means four to five times the WHO limit.
04:33You have more than 1,900 genes which are damaged.
04:36So this is dose dependent.
04:38That means impact dependent.
04:40That means duration dependent.
04:42I dare say there will be thousands of genes in our body which are already been impacted or damaged.
04:48So we need, this is tackleable.
04:50The sad story is that this is tackleable.
04:52We need an intent and we need proper content to implement.
04:56We need a separate ministry to combat air pollution.
05:00This is a worse thing which is happening to Indians at the present moment.
05:06Elections can stay.
05:07Your vote bank politics can go for a toss.
05:10Religion can be parked aside for many months.
05:13This is important because if we don't live, we will not be there to vote.
05:17If we are not alive, we will be not, we won't be there to pray.
05:21I think we need to get our act together.
05:23And if there is a particular person who can do it, it's the central government at the present moment.
05:28We just need an iron hand to whip it and make sure that things are implemented.
05:36Dr. Buggai, help me understand how many generations of impact are we looking at with air pollution?
05:41And you're saying a genetic modulation, does that mean that not just the current generation and our kids,
05:48but those who follow might also have those, you know, those changes?
05:54Absolutely.
05:54So this is proven scientifically.
05:57And very often the naysayers and the unscientific people in our community tend to doubt the science.
06:03This is medically proven.
06:04They've done huge amount of next gene sequencing studies on the mothers, on the fetuses, on the babies and the
06:13parents.
06:14Longer the exposure, greater the extent of damage.
06:17Babies are going to face this for the next many, many decades in their life, the ones who are going
06:21to be born.
06:22The important point is, can you believe it?
06:24That an expectant mother, preconceiving, that means even before a young couple plans to conceive,
06:32if the lady has been exposed to this kind of toxic air for 12 months before the impact is already
06:38there.
06:39So, you know, this is huge.
06:42And I want people to understand that if this is one thing which is going to destroy our dream
06:48of becoming 2047 Viksit Bharat or a developed nation, it's going to be air pollution.
06:54Our growth stunting of our children is 23% because of air pollution.
07:00Our cognitive function is down 63% because of air pollution.
07:05Higher amount of vascular strokes, higher amount of medical emergencies like heart attacks,
07:11of hypertension, of diabetes.
07:1420 to 30% of the world's diabetes is because of air pollution.
07:18This is all published in Lancet.
07:20When you look at materials like micro-nanoplastic,
07:24every Indian is inhaling or ingesting 1.2 lakh microfibers of micro-nanoplastic.
07:31These fibers can never be digested or excreted.
07:35These are deposited in the body.
07:37There are studies to show micro-nanoplastics are even there in the cardiac plaque.
07:41We keep blaming the bad cholesterol and the good cholesterol and lifestyle.
07:45This is what is there in the heart attack.
07:48When you get a blood clot, the clot has micro-nanoplastic.
07:53Alzheimer's, Parkinsonism, dementia, the list just goes on and on and on.
07:59People should understand that these are inflammatory markers which reactivate your pro-oncogenes.
08:06That means your silent genes become active.
08:10The people who are sitting quietly are now being made into rust.
08:13If the science is so clear, and like I said in the beginning, doctor after doctor I speak with is
08:19sounding an alarm.
08:20How is it that our government has not woken up to it?
08:23Measures are being, you know, followed.
08:26There seems to be finally some chatter about air pollution in the political corridors.
08:30But action is still far, you know, behind at the moment.
08:34Why do you think the government has not woken up to this?
08:37Is the doctor community doing something about it to ensure that they send a memorandum perhaps?
08:43They send a letter to, you know, the Prime Minister or to others in power to say that,
08:48listen, you've got to do something at war footing.
08:51You know, like I said, we managed major catastrophes extremely well.
08:57In fact, we managed it better than the rest of the world, vis-a-vis the COVID and its rollout
09:01of the vaccines.
09:02If we can circumvent that, there is no reason why we can't get control over this.
09:07It's not going to happen in a month.
09:08And I dare say it will not even happen in a year.
09:11But let's have a five-year rollout plan.
09:14Let's keep realistic goals.
09:16Like I've always said, we need a separate ministry to combat air pollution.
09:20Yes, there will be a minister, whether we like it or not.
09:23But the real fact is, we need it driven, thought through, visioned, implemented through scientists, doctors and environmentalists.
09:32Let there be a strong implementation norm.
09:35There is no reason why we cannot control traffic emission.
09:39BS4 and BS3 and BS6 is not going to help.
09:42We have to have no traffic zones like Cannot Place in the evening or Lachbat Nagar or Sorojani Nagar market
09:48for that matter.
09:49We need better public transport.
09:52Road dust can be eliminated.
09:54There is no rocket science in this.
09:56World over, you can do it.
09:57But if you only lay half the road and the contractor eats half the money, then this is what we
10:01are going to get.
10:02The vendors have to be off the streets because that is causing idling of the cars and road congestion.
10:08Most importantly, construction norms have to be obeyed with.
10:11We have to be disciplined as a community.
10:15We are paying the price of lack of discipline.
10:18We are paying the price of thinking it's someone else's problem.
10:22Pollution is not an abandoned child.
10:25This is something which is going to kill us, kill us for sure and kill us very quickly.
10:30And that death is going to be pretty miserable.
10:33All right.
10:34Like I said, hard words there and something that all of us need to, you know, sink in with the
10:40point that Dr. Baga is really making is that while, you know, like COVID or like what happened in Hiroshima
10:47and Nagasaki, the impact was immediate.
10:49With air pollution, it slowly but surely kills you.
10:53It's tripping away years of your life, month after month, hour after hour, every breath after every breath.
11:02That's what's really happening with air pollution.
11:04And if we don't wake up to take some action, it's going to impact all of us.
11:08It's a massive equalizer.
11:10It will spare nobody right from those who sit in massive bhavens to those who sit on the streets as
11:16well.
11:16For the moment, Dr. Baga, thanks so much for joining us with your perspective.
11:18If.
