Letter to BS: WHO has rightly described air pollution as 'new tobacco'

While we become wiser after an event, we are also prone to relapsing into our bad old ways once things improve a bit

Air pollution has made our cities less safe and less liveable and has earned them the epithet ‘gas chambers’.  Breathing the polluted air in the affected areas is said to be equivalent to smoking more than 30 cigarettes a day. Victims of air pollution are de facto chain smokers. The WHO has rightly described air pollution as the "new tobacco". Breathing polluted air shortens life expectancy. Clogging up of the windpipe or trachea and lungs with particulate matter causes irreversible damage to the respiratory system and, by extension, to the entire body. The correlation between air pollution and various medical