Air Pollution Linked to 22% of Deaths in India in 2023: Report Calls for PM2.5 Targets in the Clean Air Programme
A knowledge paper by FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) and the consulting firm EY, titled "Clean air, healthy India", says air pollution was linked to about 22% of all deaths in India in 2023, which is more than 2 million deaths.
The paper says India's National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) relies too much on PM10 (coarser dust). It recommends adding explicit targets for PM2.5, the finer particles that do the most harm to health.
It also says success should be measured by lower human exposure and better health outcomes, not just by counting actions taken or better readings at a few monitors.
Other suggestions include city-level monitoring to find pollution hotspots, managing pollution across state borders by "airshed", turning crop residue into fuel, cleaner brick kilns, and tying funds to results.
The report has renewed debate in Parliament and outside on how India counts deaths from air pollution. The Union government has told Parliament several times that there is no conclusive data in India to link deaths exclusively to air pollution.
National Clean Air Programme (NCAP)
The National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) is India's first national, time-bound plan to cut air pollution in cities. It was launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) on 10 January 2019. It covers 131 "non-attainment" cities, meaning cities that did not meet India's national air quality standards over several years. Each city prepares its own clean air action plan.
The FICCI-EY paper's main demand is a change to NCAP's yardstick: from PM10 to explicit PM2.5 targets linked to health. Since NCAP's 2025-26 target year is ending, the next phase of the programme is the natural place for such a change.
Particulate Matter: PM2.5 and PM10
Particulate matter (PM) means tiny bits of solid or liquid floating in the air, such as dust, soot, smoke and droplets. PM10 means particles 10 micrometres wide or smaller, and PM2.5 means particles 2.5 micrometres or smaller. A human hair is about 50-70 micrometres thick, so PM2.5 is about 20-30 times thinner. The smaller the particle, the deeper it goes into the body.
The paper argues that because PM2.5 does most of the damage to health, a clean air plan focused mainly on PM10 can show "progress" on paper while people still breathe the most harmful particles.
Air Pollution and Human Health: Measuring the Disease Burden
Air pollution harms health in many ways, from coughing and asthma to heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer. Scientists measure this harm through the "disease burden": how many deaths and how many years of healthy life can be linked to a cause like dirty air. These numbers do not come from death certificates. They come from careful statistical studies that compare how much pollution people breathe with how often they fall ill or die. Today, air pollution is counted among the biggest health risks in the world and in India.
The FICCI-EY paper's figure of about 22% of deaths in 2023 comes from this kind of disease burden counting. The disagreement between the government's "no conclusive data" position and such estimates is really a debate about how to measure health harm, and the report's call for health-based PM2.5 targets is an attempt to put that measurement at the centre of policy.
- Air pollution linked to about 22% of all deaths in India in 2023 (more than 2 million deaths), per the FICCI-EY paper "Clean air, healthy India"
- Delhi's own (internal) sources: about 36% of its PM2.5 in winter and 26% in summer, as cited in the paper
- NCAP: launched 10 January 2019 by MoEFCC; 131 non-attainment cities; revised target of up to 40% PM10 reduction by 2025-26 (base 2017-18)
- India's PM2.5 annual standard: 40 µg/m³; WHO guideline: 5 µg/m³
- Government's stated position in Parliament (2025): no conclusive data to link deaths exclusively to air pollution