Knowledge N Fact4u

Air pollution in our country, par-ticularly in some of the urbancentres, has become a major public health issue. Depending on the region and climatic con-ditions, there are several contributory fac-tors that add to the pollution levels but vehicular emissions in metropolitan cities have emerged as a major source. According to official estimates, the number of vehiclesin the national capital surged to over 1.20 crore, including over 80 lakh two-wheelers.The number of vehicles per thousand population, too, increased considerably —from 317 in 2006 to over 550 in 2016 —leading to visible congestion on the roads.That vehicular emissions contain car-cinogenic material needs no emphasis. Butwhat has now come to light is that theinhalation of toxic airborne particles emit-ted by diesel and petrol vehicles can weaken bones and speed up the ageingprocess. This finding, based on a fairly largesample size taken from the vicinity of Hyderabad,quantifies on the basis of X- Rays and other studies and