Air pollution drains $22 billion a year from Pakistan’s economy

• The senator reveals 256,000 pollution-related deaths each year.
• He says the smog is aggravated by brick kilns, industries and vehicles.
• Smog reduces life expectancy by 3.7 to 4.6 years: Sherry Rehman.
  

Islamabad: Air pollution costs Pakistan $22 billion annually, an amount equal to 6.5% of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Senator Sherry Rehman said during a Senate meeting on Thursday.

Chairing a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Climate Change, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader highlighted the serious effects of climate change on the country’s economic and human capital.

“Previous statistics showed 128,000 pollution-related deaths annually, but new data puts the number at 256,000 deaths each year,” he said during the meeting.

Senator Rehman explained that while fog is a natural phenomenon of winter, smog is a toxic mixture of chemical pollutants, warning that pollution now claims more lives than terrorism.

The PPP leader lamented the repeated appearance of Lahore in the list of cities with hazardous air quality.

According to her, emissions from brick kilns, industries and vehicles continue to worsen the country’s air quality.

During the meeting, the chairman of the committee expressed his displeasure at the absence of reliable data from the director general of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“We are rejecting this presentation due to lack of complete data and charts,” he said, while chiding the secretary of the climate change ministry for presenting unverified data.

“You were given three months, but you came unprepared,” he said.

Senator Rehman highlighted that in Punjab alone, smog affects 11 million children under the age of five, noting that young children breathe twice as fast as adults, making them more vulnerable to deadly respiratory diseases.

The senator noted that Pakistan was named the third most polluted country in the world last year, with Lahore consistently ranked as the world’s most polluted city.

Describing the smog as “apocalyptic”, he said it reduced average life expectancy by 3.7 to 4.6 years.

Senator Rehman noted that the federal government had earlier decided not to close the brick kilns but to equip them with zigzag technology as they are mostly run by poor and low-income workers.

He concluded by emphasizing the need for public-private partnerships to expand air quality monitoring across Pakistan.