Pollution pods at UN Climate Summit help people experience Delhi's smog

An immersive art installation at the COP25 UN climate conference in Madrid, Spain, is allowing visitors and leaders from around the world to experience the daily reality of air pollution faced by millions in New Delhi, Beijing and other polluted cities.
The simulated smog conditions are part of a creative drive for urgent action against air pollution.

One or two minutes inside London-based artist Michael Pinsky's pollution pods and visitors begin experiencing shortness of breath, but there's nothing dangerous in the air in the pods. Safe perfume blends and fog machines have been used to imitate the air quality of some of the world's most polluted cities -- New Delhi in India, London in Britain, Beijing in China and Sao Paulo in Brazil. The pods also have simulations of clean air from cities like Tautra in Norway. As people go around they can see the contrast between the different cities.

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"I have tried to distill the whole bodily sense of being in each place through these pollution pods. Being in Sao Paulo, for example, seems like a forest sanctuary as compared to living in the Indian capital New Delhi, until your eyes start to get wet from the sensation of ethanol. On the other hand, Tautra is unlike any air you'll have ever breathed before. It is very pure," Mr Pinksky said.

He said that while visitors at COP25 will experience the sensation of air pollution for a few minutes, breathing toxic air is the reality for millions of people every day of their lives.

Public health priority

Air pollution has been declared a public health priority by the World Health Organization (WHO). Largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels driving climate change, polluted air poisons nine out of ten people and causes over 7 million premature deaths every year. Children are especially vulnerable, with nearly 6 lakh of them dying prematurely every year from air pollution related diseases.

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As part of the Clean Air Initiative, in which governments must commit to making air safe by 2030 at the latest, and to encourage urgent action on climate change, world leaders attending the COP25 Summit will be encouraged to walk through this viscerally powerful art installation.

"Michael Pinsky responded to a competition from a university in Norway in order to see if art can change people's views on climate change," the organisers of the event said.

"He came up with concept of using air pollution which relates to climate change. He decided to change five different areas of the world to depict the conditions in which millions of people are living," they added.

The project was brought to Madrid by several agencies including the WHO. "We need to agree unequivocally on the need for a world free of air pollution. We need all countries and cities to commit to meeting WHO standards for air quality," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO said in a statement.

Throughout the life course, exposure to air pollution is a major risk for chronic heart and respiratory disease and can inhibit proper brain and lung development in children. A study published in The Lancet journal showed that 4 million cases of childhood asthma every year could be caused by air pollution resulting from traffic fumes.

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"The true cost of climate change is felt in our hospitals and in our lungs. The health burden of polluting energy sources is now so high, that moving to cleaner and more sustainable choices for energy supply, transport and food systems effectively pays for itself," said Maria Neira, WHO, Director of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health. "When health is taken into account, climate change mitigation is an opportunity, not a cost," she said. The pollution pods have been experienced by over 20,000 people since their launch at the Starmus Festival in Norway in June 2018.

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