Nature Sustainability Journal reveals, India has one of the highest, i.e. 53 per cent, global prevalence of anaemia among women of reproductive age
For every 10 microgram/metre cube increase in ambient pollutant PM2.5 exposure, the average anaemia prevalence among women increases by 7.23 per cent. PM 2.5 pollution are tiny air particles that are hazardous to human health.
On the contrary, says a study as it linked specific PM2.5 pollution to the common blood disorder, if India meets its recent clean-air targets, anaemia prevalence among women with reproductive age will fall from 53 per cent to 39.5 per cent, taking 186 districts below the national target of 35 per cent. The study findings “Reducing the burden of anaemia in Indian women of reproductive age with clean-air targets” are published in journal Nature Sustainability Ironically, India has one of the highest, ie 53 per cent, global prevalence of anaemia among women of reproductive age.
The NFHS-5 findings too reveal that the prevalence of anaemia has increased among children, women of all age groups including pregnant women, and men. This increase in prevalence was observed in almost all the states barring a few exceptions.
Even as the Government is finding reasons to cut down anemia prevalence, the study by the researchers shows that long-term exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a type of air pollution, may increase the prevalence of anaemia through systemic inflammation. The researchers used a linear mixed model adjusted for potential confounding factors, showing that for every 10?µg?m-3 increase in ambient PM2.5 exposure, the average anaemia prevalence among Indian women of reproductive age increases by 7.23 per cent. Among PM2.5 species, sulfate and black carbon are more associated with anaemia than organics and dust. Among sectoral contributors, industry was the greatest, followed by the unorganized, domestic, power, road dust, agricultural waste burning and transport sectors.
“Our results suggest that the transition to clean energy would accelerate India’s progress towards the ‘anaemia-free’ mission target,” said the scientists led by the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, who used multiple datasets, including NFHS and satellite data to link pollution and health. Thus, ambient air pollution, which is known to cause not only substantial morbidity and mortality globally but also adverse health outcomes, including cardiovascular and respiratory disease, diabetes and low birth weight, is now known to cause anemia also. The researchers included Ekta Chaudhary, Sagnik Dey, Santu Ghosh and, Srishti Jain (All from IIT-Delhi) and Anura V Kurpad( both from St. John’s Medical College, Bengaluru), Sumit Sharma, Nimish Singh, Shivang Agarwal (All from TERI, Delhi) Kushal Tibrewal and Chandra Venkataraman ((IIT-Mumbai), Aaron J. Cohen(Health Effects Institute, USA and Shuxiao Wang (School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China).