Technology cannot save India’s air quality, only long-term avoidance will work: Frank Hammes, Global CEO of IQAir 

India has a general air pollution challenge year round - traffic. A lot of dirty fuel is still being burned and fuel standards are not high. Another problem is the household use of biomass and year-round cooking. In winter, there is stubble burning from agriculture. That’s a major, major contributor. In winter, everything gets trapped under an inversion layer, which makes it like a clogged toilet in a way. If this inversion layer was there all year round, you would probably experience higher pollution. So, it’s a challenge not only in India, but all around the world.

I’ll be very honest, I see nothing. I see nothing that will be able to make a significant difference. The only thing that will make a difference is avoidance in the first place. Anything else is wishful thinking. Nowhere in the world has technology made a significant difference. I do understand that people want a wonder weapon, but it doesn’t exist. China improved its air quality by removing the sources, right, by dealing with the root of the problem.

Honestly, putting water onto the street is one of the tech solutions that can actually work. We know that traffic, especially when you have dusty roads, people who are close to the roadside, that dust is dangerous. People always think it’s not so dangerous, but it is dangerous. If you have construction sites, these can be major sources of air pollution. Spraying water can be helpful during these events. That’s one of the very, very effective technologies that’s out there. We also have billions of N95 masks left over from the pandemic. Those masks are very effective to protect people from PM2.5. Switching to EV vehicles will be helpful, but putting filtration on electric vehicles or buses; it will do nothing. It’s not even a band-aid solution. This is like adding one drop of warm water into a cold bathtub.

We faced a similar situation in the US, but this system was changed in May 2024 because the government realised it was misleading. It probably comes from past limitations in measuring equipment that could not reliably measure the high levels of pollution. Now, the equipment is capable of doing this. But the India Air Quality Index is a relatively young index, only about 10 years old. Meanwhile, we are using the US AQI that doesn’t have limitations. So, that’s where the differences of AQI come from, when you go on our app or website versus what the government is reporting.

In India, the published AQI is averaged over a 24-hour period. So, when you average over such a long period, you have fluctuations. And we see daily fluctuations where the concentration of PM2.5 might be twice as much during a certain day than the other, but it gets averaged out. That is the methodology used currently in India. At IQAir, we average over a single hour. So, when you see our air quality data, it is the data from within that hour that we’re averaging. The government is more concerned about regulatory monitoring, to determine long-term action. For us, it is important to make sure that people get the information to make decisions in the short-term.

We’ve gotten requests from certain government entities in India to provide data, to allow them to maybe be able to do things a little faster. We’d love to do more in India. The goal is to move in the right direction and we think it starts with the young people. One of the programmes that we are very excited about is to help schools do this monitoring. You should allow young kids in schools to monitor air quality, discuss what it means, understand the impact of air pollution in terms of health and climate change.

Set up a long-term goal and have an implementation plan that has clear actions. China improved its air quality by removing the sources. But I think right now, maybe the quickest win that India could have, especially during November and December, would be to help the farmers and make the equipment more affordable for them so as to not burn stubble.