PAKISTAN
Growing millions

Zubeida Mustafa 

ONE of the major factors contributing to the environment crisis in Pakistan is the unbridled population growth rate. Environmentalists generally focus more on issues such as climate change and global warming caused by carbon emissions, which are the result of industrialisation, deforestation and water mismanagement. It must, however, be noted that rapid population increase is at the root of all these evils. Moreover, it also has a negative impact on human development, both individually and collectively.

More shocking than the country’s astounding fertility rate is the government’s indifference vis-à-vis the demographic problem. We are way behind many developing states that have a phenomenal record in curbing their population growth rate. We are the fifth most populous state in the world today. I believe this is the major cause of our underdevelopment as it is not possible to meet the basic needs of the whopping numbers who constitute Pakistan today, plus the six million or so who join their ranks every year.

The census in 2023 recorded our population at 241m, an increase of 33m in just six years since the previous head count of 2017. The growth rate was 2.55 per cent. Unless drastic measures are taken the numbers will grow. As Thomas Malthus has reminded us again and again, population grows geometrically while food production increases arithmetically. If this pattern continues for too long then famine, conflict and epidemics intervene to restore the balance.

To give one an idea of how this is reflected in the people’s lives take a look at this data. Today, the Total Fertility Rate (the average number of children that married women of reproductive age have) stands at 3.6. It should be 1.9 if we want our population size to be stationary. The contraceptive prevalence rate is 34pc, which includes the 10pc who claim to use conventional methods that are not reliable. Worse still is the high unmet need of 17pc, denoting couples who do not want to have more children but do not have access to contraceptives. The government has failed in all respects due to a lack of political will, corruption and ineptitude.



The focus should be on the 6m babies born each year.

Also at work is the planners’ inability to understand the relationship between family planning and the empowerment of women. The fact is that underpinning our population programme is the low status of women in Pakistan. That creates pressure on mothers of girls to continue bearing children until two sons are born. Sons are regarded as status symbol for a family.

Interestingly, some NGO members in the family planning sector tell me that the latest trend among women who have had some education and are working is to opt for a small family, even if it means forgoing sons. The problem is that even these women generally have no control over decision-making in their homes and are as powerless in the latter as they are in society. Hence their wish with regard to family size does not prevail. It seems so unfair that women have to submit to their menfolk’s diktat even though the burden of pregnancy and child-rearing falls on the mother.

Yet our population planners are blind to this new trend. Small wonder the focus is heavily on women who are at the receiving end of all counselling on the use of contraceptives and the importance of planned families. Why are men not mobilised and made aware of how our rapidly growing population is creating problems for them as well as for the country?

There is growing evidence that mindsets can be changed by talking to people and giving them the space to talk about their views regarding their problems and how they can be resolved. This dialogue is important if solutions to people’s problems are to be found and awareness created. True, these are issues of a very personal nature but they have a direct bearing on people’s lives.

Hence the need of the hour is to make the subject of family planning a priority and part of the national discourse. Its implications must be discussed freely in all private and public forums. The focus should be on the 6m babies born each year. They have basic rights which neither the state nor the parents can fulfil. That makes their lives brutish. The newborns add to the backlog of poverty, illiteracy and disease, and also make development an impossible task. Ironically, this is happening in a country that is already child-unfriendly and where children are maltreated and abused.

Were the caretaker government to launch a national discourse on the population issue on various public platforms and get population departments to pull up their socks, a useful beginning could be made.

www.zubeida-mustafa.com

Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2023

Dealing with depression

Zafar Mirza 

“There are wounds that never show on the body…” — Laurell K. Hamilton



Asim Jamil, a young man in his 30s, killed himself some days ago. A huge tragedy. May Allah bless his soul. My heartfelt condolences to the grieving family. He was the second son of the famous Maulana Tariq Jamil, a renowned religious scholar and a household name in Pakistan.

To quell rumours, the bereft older brother recorded and released a video message on social media, explaining the circumstances of his death. Tired of the chronic depression he had been suffering from since the age of 13, Asim took his security guard’s gun and shot himself in the chest.

The brother explained that for the last six months his depression had become severe and he was undergoing ‘electric shock treatment’. This was the will of God and we are satisfied with His will, he said.

What is the depression the late Asim Jamil was suffering from?

We all feel low from time to time for various reasons. Usually, it is due to some loss or sense of failure — for example, the loss of a loved one. Sometimes one feels low without any understandable reason. But most often, the sadness goes away in a few days or weeks and we are back to normal. However, if it persists beyond two weeks and in­­creases in severity, then a point comes when it becomes a disability — a depressive illness or a de­­­­pressive disorder — and requires therapeutic intervention, like any other physical health condition.

Globally, an estimated 5pc of adults suffer from depression.

It is just like having a common cold which generally stays for a few days and then goes away, but then, sometimes, turns into a respiratory tract in­­fection requiring antimicrobial treatment. Rarely, it may even turn into life-threatening pneumonia.

In the manner of a physical health condition, depression is a mental health condition. Human health, according to the WHO definition, is a state of complete physical and mental well-being, together. So, the physical and mental dimensions are inextricably woven in the word ‘health’. They coexist within us, influence each other and require equal attention.

According to WHO, a depressive disorder involves a depressed mood or loss of pleasure or interest in activities for long periods of time. It can affect all aspects of life, including relationships with family, friends and community. Other symptoms may include poor concentration, feelings of excessive guilt or low self-esteem, hopelessness about the future, thoughts about dying or suicide, loss of or disrupted sleep, changes in appetite or weight, and feeling very tired or having low energy. A person suffering from depression prefers isolation.

A depressive episode can be categorised as mild, moderate, or severe, depending on the number and severity of symptoms, as well as the impact on an individual’s functioning. There can be a single episode of depressive disorder or there can be recurrent episodes. Depression can be a part of bipolar disorder, in which depressive episodes alternate with periods of manic symptoms, which include euphoria or irritability and increased activity or energy. Sometimes depressive illness runs in families.

Depression is on the rise. Globally, an estimated five per cent of adults suffer from depression. In Pakistan, in 1990 depressive disorders ranked 22nd among the leading 25 causes of Disability Adjusted Life Years, a metric calculated by adding years of life lost due to premature death and years of life lived with disability. By 2019, depressive disorders had jumped to the 16th position. Depression is about 50pc more common in women than men. Globally, one in four women suffers from pregnancy- or childbirth-related depression (perinatal/postnatal depression), the prevalence of which would be even higher in Pakistan.

Depressive illness or depressive disorder is a treatable condition. For mild depression, cognitive behaviour therapy, a form of talking therapy or psychotherapy by a trained person is helpful. Moderate to severe depression requires high-intensity psychological intervention or antidepressant medication or both. Antidepressant medication must be taken only under continued medical supervision.

The treatment is long-term — six months or more — and the medicines have side effects (dependence is not one of them). They are usually quite effective but must be taken under professional supervision. In a few cases of severe depressive illness, psychotherapy or medication don’t work.

In such cases, sometimes electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is also administered but it is a very specialised treatment and has to be administered at the advice and under the supervision of a psychiatrist. In common parlance, ECT is referred to as ‘electric shocks’, as Asim Jamil’s brother mentioned in his message.

There is a general lack of awareness and understanding about mental disorders, including depression, even among educated people. Commenting on Asim Jamil’s unfortunate death by suicide due to depressive illness, a senior and popular media anchor described depression in his vlog as a special kind of madness and a contagious condition! Because of such ignorance, people suffering from mental illnesses are stigmatised, called mad, mocked and mistreated.

Our medical training also lacks the required attention to mental health. In our country, mental health issues are increasing and so common that they cannot be left to psychiatrists or psychologists alone. In any case, we have only less than 1,000 psychiatrists and less than 3,000 psychologists in the country. Globally, it is estimated that around 60pc of patients with depression lack treatment, one can well imagine the situation in an income-poor country like Pakistan.

Physical and mental illnesses often coexist. Preventive, promotive, curative and rehabilitative mental health services should be an integral component of quality primary healthcare, and all members of the PHC team and the people themselves must be trained to deal with mental health issues.

Asim Jamil’s tragic death was highlighted be­­cause of his famous father. It is, however, a stark reminder of the vast amount of silent and unaddressed mental health suffering all around us.

The writer is a former SAPM on health, professor of health systems at Shifa Tameer-i-Millat University, WHO adviser on UHC, and member of the Pakistan Mental Health Coalition.
zedefar@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2023

Understanding suicide

Zafar Mirza 


“No one commits suicide because they want to die”… “Because they want to stop the pain”.

Tiffanie DeBartolo

WHILE late Asim Jamil’s tragic suicide is fresh in minds, it is important to talk about the phenomenon by way of demystifying and destigmatising it.

I know three people in my life who took their own lives. One had been visibly in a low mood for some time before he hanged himself. Another, an adolescent, had a fight at home on some sticky matter and in the evening his body was found on a nearby railway track.


The third one was burnt in his house; there is speculation that the arson was deliberate, as he was living alone following a separation. Now that I have sat down to write on the subject, the faces of all three dear ones are coming to my mind, two cheerful, one sad. May Allah bless them all.

Suicide, “the deliberate act of killing oneself”, indeed can happen as a premeditated act or on an impulse. It can happen due to a stressful life situation or because of mental illness.

Sometimes people kill themselves when they reach a dead end in a crisis situation, e.g. Hitler, and sometimes it runs in the family, for example, the famous writer Earnest Hemingway had seven members over four generations who took their own lives. There are also instances of mass suicides. Suicide, hence, is a diverse phenomenon in terms of its occurrence, reasons and methods.

Mental disorders and suicide are closely related. Systematic reviews inform that up to 70 to 80 per cent of suicide deaths are attributed to a mental or substance use disorder. Relative risk of suicide in people with depressive disorders is highest followed by bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Psychological autopsy studies have shown that 40pc of suicides in China, 35pc in India, and 37pc in Sri Lanka are linked with the diagnosis of depression. However, an important study published from Pakistan in 2008 by Murad Moosa Khan et al found even stronger association between mental disorders, especially depression and suicide.

Of the 100 suicides the team studied, 96 were established as having psychiatric disorder through psychological autopsy and 79 out of these had depression as a principal diagnosis.

The most common methods of suicide were hanging, followed by poisoning. Firearms were used in 15pc of these suicides. And only three of these 96 victims were undergoing treatment, one from a psychiatrist and two from family physicians. These numbers speak for themselves and reflect the mental health care situation in the country.

Regardless of the causation, the incidence of suicide is increasing the world over. Globally, around 800,000 people take their own lives every year. Seventy-seven per cent of these suicides take place in low- and middle-income countries.

Globally, among young people between 15 and 29 years, suicide is now the fourth leading cause of death, according to WHO. Of all suicide deaths, 58pc occur between the ages of 15-49.


They are patients, not sinners.

There is a generally accepted rule of thumb that for every suicide there are 10 unsuccessful suicidal attempts and for every such attempt there are 100 people who harbour suicidal thoughts.

According to the estimate of Mental, Neuro­logical and Substance Use Disorders, Burden of Disease study in Pakistan in 2019, there are 9.77 suicides per 100,000 population, which comes to around 20,000 suicides per year in the country. Going by the above, there would be 200,000 attempts and two million people with ideas of suicide.

These are high numbers. In the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, among 22 member states, Pakistan has the third highest rate of annual suicides after Djibouti and Somalia.

Lately, there have been reports about high rate of suicides from northern areas, especially in Gilgit-Baltistan and especially among young women. Some researchers have been probing the causes but until now there is no conclusive inference.

More women are educated than men in the main cities and nearby areas in GB, there are limited job opportunities and there are strong local traditions for not allowing young people to exercise their life choices. These and others may be the causes, and it may be simply that suicides are being reported more in the media from these areas because similar causes are not less prevalent in many other areas of Pakistan.

Until this point in the article, I have avoided using the word ‘commit’ with ‘suicide’ as ‘commit’ connotes a crime or a sin. There is a history of how suicide has been considered a crime in different countries. This was the case in Britain until 1961. P

akistan continued with it until Section 325 of the Pakistan Penal Code, a law from 1860 and a colonial legacy, was repealed in May 2022 by the Senate and in October 2022 by the National Assembly. It was a result of a successful national advocacy and lobbying campaign, ‘Mujrim Naheen Mareez’ launched by Taskeen Health Initiative, a Karachi-based not-for-profit working on increasing mental health awareness, providing free-of-cost mental health support and advocating for mental health policy change in Pakistan. Taskeen is also an active part of Pakistan Mental Health Coalition, an alliance of more than 100 members and organisations working to promote mental health.

Under Section 325, suicide was an offence. A person attempting suicide could be imprisoned for up to one year and could also be fined. The state could take over the assets of those that committed suicide. This would result in non-reporting, stigmatising and lack of treatment. The law has changed now and needs to be fully implemented.

Patients with mental disorders, with previous suicidal attempts and suicidal ideation need special attention. Suicide prevention is critical and complicated and professional help must be sought at the right time.

Suicide is also a taboo. Enlightened religious scholars especially need to play an important role in destigmatising suicide as more than 90pc of people taking their own lives are actually suffering from mental illnesses. They are patients, not sinners.

The writer is a former SAPM on health, professor of health systems at Shifa Tameer-i-Millat University, WHO adviser on UHC, and member of the Pakistan Mental Health Coalition.

Zedefar@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2023

More than 1 in 10 pediatric ambulance runs are for mental health emergencies

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ANN & ROBERT H. LURIE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO

A new study offers a novel look at the scope of the youth mental health crisis across the United States – in 2019-2020, more than 1 in 10 kids who were brought to the hospital by ambulance had a behavioral health emergency. Out of these behavioral health emergencies, 85 percent were in 12-17-year-olds. Findings were published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine.

“Our study found that pediatric behavioral health emergencies requiring an ambulance were much too frequent,” said senior author Jennifer Hoffmann, MD, MS, emergency medicine physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “And yet, there are no national guidelines for EMS personnel to manage these patients. We found considerable variation in the use of sedative medications and restraints across different parts of the country. There is a great need for standardized EMS protocols for pediatric behavioral health emergencies. Currently only four states have these available.”

In addition to regional variation, the study found increased odds of restraint use among patients 6-11 years old. Children with developmental, communication and physical disabilities were three times more likely to be restrained than children without these disabilities.

“EMS personnel are likely less comfortable with weight-based dosing of sedative medications and EMS agencies in most states don’t have pediatric-specific sedative protocols, which might contribute to the increased use of physical restraints for younger children while in the ambulance,” said Julia Wnorowska, medical student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and first author on the study. “Also, protocols for EMS personnel are needed to help manage children with autism spectrum disorders and other neurodevelopmental disabilities. Specific interventions could be developed to prevent and reduce agitation in this population, such as personalized emergency information forms that delineate patient-specific triggers and de-escalation techniques.”

“Future research should determine whether the use of restrictive interventions can be reduced, while simultaneously promoting staff safety, through strategies such as education and adoption of pediatric-specific protocols,” said Dr. Hoffmann, who also is the Children's Research Fund Junior Board Research Scholar.

Research at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is conducted through Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute. The Manne Research Institute is focused on improving child health, transforming pediatric medicine and ensuring healthier futures through the relentless pursuit of knowledge. Lurie Children’s is a nonprofit organization committed to providing access to exceptional care for every child. It is ranked as one of the nation’s top children’s hospitals by U.S. News & World Report. Lurie Children’s is the pediatric training ground for Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Emergency medicine-focused research at Lurie Children’s is conducted through the Grainger Research Program in Pediatric Emergency Medicine.

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JOURNAL

Academic Emergency Medicine

DOI

10.1111/acem.14833 

PATRIARCHAL PAKISTAN

Sexism continues to live on through men like Javed Sheikh

Sheikh believes even saying 'Mera Jism Meri Marzi' (‘My Body, My Choice’) is not right.

COMMENT
Hawwa Fazal
Updated 13 Nov, 2023

Even after six years of women explaining what the slogan ‘Mera Jism Meri Marzi’ really means and the problems women face because of a lack of understanding of a basic concept like consent, men like Javed Sheikh still refuse to understand. They have buried their heads under the sand, pretending the problems faced by women don’t exist and reducing the slogan to a cheap gimmick.

Whenever ‘Mera Jism Meri Marzi’ is discussed, it always ends up being a barometer for misogyny in Pakistani society. In a podcast with FHM Pakistan’s Adnan Faisal, the ‘legendary’ actor Javed Sheikh implied that he does not believe in consent.

The conversation about women started when the host asked the actor about his opinions on the Aurat March and the slogan, which translates to ‘my body, my choice’. The Quaid-i-Azam Zindabad actor began by saying that though he greatly respects women, women should remain like women. He did not clarify, however, how exactly women should “be like women”.

He stated that he is against the slogan. When the host tried to explain the context behind the slogan, Sheikh brushed it off, saying, “kehna bhi acha nai lagta [even saying isn’t good]“, like a typical misogynist man who is set on his opinion.

His words indicate that he thinks that the slogan is about men and the male gaze, when in reality, it isn’t about men at all. It is about all genders having the ability to have control over their own bodies — including refusing to be touched, stared at or harassed. It is about the every day struggles of women who have to think twice before stepping out of the house. It is about all genders who feel unsafe in public and private spaces due to a looming fear of being touched against their will and much more.

In the podcast, Sheikh went on to explain why he was against women saying the slogan, “This is an Islamic country, you are born in a Muslim family”. Before he could complete his statement, the host interjected to explain that the slogan is about consent. However, it failed to make any impact on the actor. “I disagree with this,” he said nonchalantly, sliding back in his chair.

“Aurat jitne covered hogi utni achi lagay gi, meray hisab say [The more covered a woman is, the beautiful she will look, according to me],” the actor said.

One would think that as the father of a daughter, Javed Sheikh would be more empathetic in understanding the need for women to have control over their bodies and have the power to refuse anybody who tries to force themselves onto them. On the contrary, he said he didn’t even feel that women should have this power. He failed to grasp the concept that no one should be able to have power over anyone else’s body but their own.

It seems like Sheikh lives in a bubble where the worst problems are the way women dress. He seems to be under the impression that having agency over your body means women in Pakistan will be running in the streets in their birthday suits. We think he needs some lessons on what women who live outside his bubble experience and how they often have to bear the consequences of a lack of understanding of the word ‘consent’.

His words and actions clearly show that he, like most bigoted Pakistani men, has failed to understand that the word jism is not sexual. Instead, the “slogan is fundamentally saying you don’t get to set the terms of my life, my body, my decisions, my agency, you don’t get to dictate,” as beautifully put by Mira Sethi.

 

We Are Not Beautiful

As Pakistanis, we need to come to terms with our innate prejudices about beauty, writes Tyrone Tellis.

TYRONE TELLIS

UPDATED 19 OCT, 2023 

When my son first started school, an interesting incident occurred. He was asked to write a few sentences about his mother. So he wrote his mother’s name and that she is tall – and he also wrote that she is fat – and that is where the problem arose. Apparently, two teachers tried their best to convince him that he could not write this description about his mother. He was adamant that he could. My wife, for her part, had a good laugh. However, the incident does reveal a lot about our attitudes towards body appearance and that old subterfuge beauty.

Beauty has been part of history and folklore for millennia. Men, we are told, have desired and admired beautiful women. Standards of beauty have, of course, varied from age to age and culture to culture, and just as customs and traditions have changed, so has the idea of what beauty is. It’s no secret that good-looking people are popular even when the facts tell another tale. Take the myth about Cleopatra’s beauty. The Egyptian queen, who was of Macedonian descent, was, according to historians, not the iconic beauty we have seen immortalised on the big screen; she was in fact a woman with a strong personality.

However, talking about the personality of a woman without clubbing it with the word beauty seems like heresy in our modern day and age. We have experienced quite a few revolutions in the past 150 years, and one of them has been the rise of the body positivity movement. The logic we hear time and again is that everyone (women in particular) is beautiful. To suggest anything else would warrant a lynch mob and brands, it seems, have embraced this mantra. Dove especially has won accolades and public support for embracing body positivity and empowering women to believe they are beautiful.

From an ethical perspective, the reality is different and global brands are dangerously spreading Western ideals of beauty – especially of fair skin. Even in Africa, women are turning to whitening creams, while closer to home in India, there has been a backlash against fairness creams, the ripples of which have been felt in Pakistan. Rights activists have castigated the emphasis on fairness as whitewashing and colonialist. However, to be honest, brands do prey on people’s low self-esteem, so it is not surprising that activists and even ordinary people have been condemnatory of certain brands – and while it is true (hate it or love it) that the world is appearance-driven and to a large extent obsessed with perfection, this mindset is nevertheless a dangerous one that breeds low self-confidence at best and self-loathing at worst.

Do brands generate low self-esteem especially among women or do they rely on it? Although this seems to be a chicken-and-egg discussion for most, I feel that brands zero in on the insecurity and sense of inadequacy created by the negative incidents that affect our lives. Do brands in the beauty and personal care business have a moral responsibility to change the way they communicate and advertise? Yes, they do; more so in the age of social media where the veneer of fakeness has become so thick and can lead to damaging mental and emotional consequences.

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In Pakistan, however, it is rare for a beauty or fashion brand to divert from the stereotypical skin colour, body type and height seen on international ramps and screens. For things to change, we need to accept our colourism and prejudice towards darker complexions first.

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So are beauty and personal care brands stepping up to the plate? While some have, by embracing plus sizes and ethnically diverse faces, most are still perpetuating the fair skin, slim figure and thin waist stereotype that has influenced millions of impressionable women globally. This is not to say that efforts have not been made towards diversity and inclusivity. I remember when I was doing my A’ levels, a student from Somalia joined our class. To introduce himself he told us his name and which country he came from. As expected, very few of us had heard of Somalia, so he asked us if we had heard of supermodel Iman, informing us that she too was from Somalia. We all knew that Iman was among the most beautiful and celebrated women in the world, but for that student, it meant representation and global prestige for his country.

So has enough been done? The answer is that small steps have been made. We all know how Dove made body positivity a cause. Furthermore, the popularity of people like Priyanka Chopra and the launch of brands by Rihanna has meant that women who are not necessarily fair or slim can find suitable products for their skin tones. In Pakistan, however, it is rare for a beauty or fashion brand to divert from the stereotypical skin colour, body type and height seen on international ramps and screens. For things to change, we need to accept our colourism and prejudice towards darker complexions first.

As any sociologist will tell you, beauty is a social construct, and although it varies from society to society, the ideal of beauty is the same; to be thin and fair. Cindy Crawford made a telling point when she said she wished she could look like Cindy Crawford when she is on screen.

Today, brands in the beauty and personal care segment are endorsing body positivity and as far as good intentions go, this is worthy, but it is not enough. In my view, beauty standards are not the issue. Beauty as a standard is.

We need to drop the slogan that everyone is beautiful and I also think that the adage that beauty is only skin deep is even more toxic. We need to tell ourselves and especially our children that what we need to do is focus on what is beneath – that is what really matters. As a society, we – the public, the activists and brands – need to learn to celebrate substance instead of something as superficial as skin. Ed Sheeran embraced this mindset in his song Beautiful People: “That’s not who we are; we are not beautiful. Yeah, that’s not who we are; we are not beautiful.” And that is not something to be ashamed of.

Tyrone Tellis is Senior Manager, Corporate Sales and PR, Bogo. tyrone.tellis@gmail.com

Very high air pollution event on 2-5 Nov 2023 in Delhi NCR couldn’t be explained by crop residue burning

Reports and Proceedings

RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR HUMANITY AND NATURE

 

IMAGE: 

FIGURE 1: TIME SERIES OF PM2.5 MEASURED AT THE CUPI-G SITES IN PUNJAB, HARYANA AND DELHI NCR DURING 01 OCT TO 06 NOV OF 2022 AND 2023. WE ALSO DEPICT THE RAINFALL AROUND THE SITES IN BOTH YEARS BY GREEN BARS, AND THE GREEN/RED DOTS ARE MARKED ON THE FINAL DAY OF MEASUREMENTS. DATA SUBJECTED TO FINAL QUALITY CONTROL (QA/QC).

view more 

CREDIT: AAKASH PROJECT, RIHN

While cricket world cup games are waiting to be played in Delhi stadiums, celebration of goddess Durga’s defense of demon attack is just finished, festival of lights Diwali is just around the corner, but various activities in the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) were restricted to protect residents from exposure to air pollution, i.e., particulate matter less than 2.5 µm in diameter (PM2.5). This is not for first time and will not be for the last as well until the policymakers work in harmony, based on scientific evidences, to limit direct emissions of air pollutants. 

Since the late October this year we can find how many crop residue burning (CRB) hotspots are detected in Punjab and Haryana, how the farmers are being tracked for their activities by the law-and-order departments. Tens of newspapers in English language alone are covering the daily updates on the situation on crop residue burning in the neighbouring states of Haryana and Punjab. But none have raised a question whether the CRB in Punjab is single most important cause of overall increase in air pollution through the month of October 2023 or in the earlier years, and the eventual closure of Delhi NCR on 2nd Nov 2023.

In 2022, a group of international collaborators led by the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) team have conducted field campaign in the region of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi NCR (Singh et al., 2023; RIHN press release on 2nd Oct 2023). A network of about 30 low-cost Compact and Useful PM2.5 Instrument with Gas sensors (CUPI-Gs) has been established in the region for this year as well (Figure 1). These measurements, for the first time, provided a wholesome picture of month-long CRB activities in the source regions and their contribution to the limited number of high PM2.5 events over the Delhi NCR. In the air pollution events that occurred in Delhi last November, the impact of CRB was found to be severe. Our analysis also suggested its predictive capability by using the data from the whole CUPI-G measurements (Singh et al., 2023; unpublished analysis).

In response to recent reports suggesting that farming practices such as crop residue burning are the primary cause of air pollution in New Delhi, scientists in Japan and India are today setting the record straight. Their research and analysis (e.g., Figure 2) shows conclusively that blaming farmers for the city's air pollution crisis is not only misleading but also unjust. The data show that the real culprit is local emissions of Delhi NCR itself, which coupled with the recent adverse weather, has led to recent spikes in levels of PM2.5. The FLEXPART model simulation (Takigawa et al., 2020), representing fire emission tracer from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) fire detections, shows the transport of airmass were limited to the source regions of Punjab and Haryana, and transported to the southern and western area more frequently than to the Delhi NCR.

Our analysis shows contrasting behaviour in two markers for CRB, carbon monoxide (CO) and PM2.5. These pollutants have evolved quite differently in recent days as shown at 4 selected sites, with both PM2.5 and CO increasing rapidly on 02nd Nov 2023 at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and other sites in Delhi NCR, but values increased much more slowly in the source region in Punjab and Haryana (Figure 3). What does this mean? Firstly, that CO and PM2.5 levels must be coming from common sources - their behaviour can't be explained through a single phenomenon such as crop residue fires, but local burning related sources must have large contributions (e.g., Mishra et al., 2023). Secondly, the behaviour of the background levels points to a local source of pollution, pollution that is trapped nearby and not blown away/in on the winds. Delhi NCR has in fact experiencing the consequences of their own local emissions. The weather pattern traps the air over Delhi NCR and prevents its dispersal. This build-up has led to the current crisis.

When we think about air pollution in Delhi NCR, it's wrong to hurry to judgement. Sometimes the real causes behind this emergency are industrial emissions, vehicular pollution, urban construction and developments and other urban factors that often go unchecked (e.g., Sawlani et al., 2018). As a community, we must address all causes of air pollution and not abjugate agricultural community only.

Aakash Project at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), Japan is working closely with Indian counterparts to address the issue of "An Interdisciplinary Study toward Clean Air, Public Health and Sustainable Agriculture: The Case of Crop Residue Burning in North India". The article is prepared with inputs from Paul Griffiths of Cambridge University (visiting scientist at JAMSTEC), who is not a member of Aakash project, and we acknowledge his contribution.

* The second report is available at https://www.chikyu.ac.jp/rihn_e/news/detail/414/

Figure 2: showing the progression of daily mean PM2.5 at CUPI-G sites (red dots), VIIRS fire counts and rainfall maps, and NCEP-FNL wind vectors at 10 m height.

Figure 3: Day (0600-1800 IST) and night (1800-0600 IST) time average values of PM2.5 and CO at 4 selected sites. CO can be used as a tracer for (incomplete) biomass burning. Analysis based on data subjected to final QA/QC.

CREDIT

Aakash Project, RIHN

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Nov-2023

 

Putting an end to plastic separation anxiety

Researchers have developed a process to break down the mixture of conventional and bio-based plastics that ends up at recycling centers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

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AN ILLUSTRATION SHOWCASING THE DIFFICULTY OF CORRECTLY SORTING PLASTIC AND PLASTIC-LIKE MATERIALS.

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CREDIT: JENNY NUSS/BERKELEY LAB

Bio-based plastics such as polylactic acid (PLA) were invented to help solve the plastic waste crisis, but they often end up making waste management more challenging. Because these materials look and feel so similar to conventional, petroleum-based plastics, many products end up not in composters, where they break down as designed, but instead get added to the recycling stream by well-intentioned consumers. There, the products get shredded and melted down with the recyclable plastics, bringing down the quality of the mixture and making it harder to manufacture functional products out of recycled plastic resin. The only solution, currently, is to try to separate the different plastics at recycling facilities. Yet even with the most high-end, automated sorting tools, some biobased plastics end up contaminating the sorted streams.

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) are collaborating with X – the moonshot incubator led by Alphabet, Google’s parent company – to not only skip the problematic separation step, but also make the final product better for the planet. 

The team has invented a simple “one pot” process to break down mixtures of petroleum-based and bio-based plastics using naturally derived salt solutions paired with specialized microbes. In a single vat, the salts act as a catalyst to break the materials down from polymers, large structures of repeating molecules bonded together, into the individual molecules called monomers, which the microbes then ferment into a new type of biodegradable polymer that can be made into fresh commodity products. The process is described in a One Earth paper published November 17.

“It’s sort of ironic because the purpose of using bio-based plastics is to be more sustainable, but it’s causing problems,” said first author Chang Dou, a senior scientific engineering associate at the Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit (ABPDU) at Berkeley Lab. Dou was recently named as one of the American Institute of Chemical Engineer’s 35 Under 35. “Our project is trying to get around the separation issue and make it so you don’t have to worry about whether you mix your recycling bin. You can put all the plastic in one bucket.” 

In addition to streamlining recycling, the team’s approach could enable bio-based manufacturing of other valuable products using the same bacteria that are happily munching on plastic monomers. Imagine a world where biofuels or even medicines could be made from plastic waste – of which there is about 8.3 billion tons sitting around in landfills.  

“There is an open discussion on whether we can use waste plastics as a carbon source for biomanufacturing. It is a very advanced idea. But we proved that using waste plastics, we can feed microbes. With more genetic engineering tools, microbes might be able to grow on multiple types of plastics at the same time. We foresee the potential to continue this study where we can replace the sugars, traditional carbon sources for microbes, with the processed hard-to-recycle mixed plastics that can be converted to valuable products through fermentation,” said Zilong Wang, a UC Berkeley postdoctoral researcher working at JBEI. 

The Berkeley Lab scientists’ next step is to experiment with other organic salt catalysts to try to find one that is both highly effective at breaking polymers down and can be reused in multiple batches to lower costs. They are also modeling how the process would work at the large scales of real-world recycling facilities. 

In their recent paper, the scientists demonstrated the potential of their approach in laboratory bench-scale experiments with mixtures of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – the most common petroleum-based plastic, used in things like water bottles and spun into polyester fibers – and PLA, the most common bio-based plastic. 

They used an amino-acid-based salt catalyst previously developed by colleagues at JBEI  and a strain of Pseudomonas putida engineered by scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This combination successfully broke down 95% of the PET/PLA mixture and converted the molecules into a type of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) polymer. PHAs are a new class of biodegradable plastic substitutes designed to efficiently break down in a variety of natural environments, unlike petroleum-based plastics.

Team member Hemant Choudhary noted that although their chemical recycling process is currently only proven for PET plastics contaminated with biodegradable PLA, it would still be beneficial for the diverse plastic streams encountered in real recycling facilities. “It can be completely integrated with existing plastic sources,” said Choudhary, a Sandia National Laboratories staff scientist working at JBEI. Most commercial products are not just one kind of plastic, but a handful of different kinds combined, he explained. For example, a fleece jacket is made with PET-based polyesters alongside polyolefins or polyamides. “We can throw it in our one-pot process and easily process the polyester component from that mixture and convert it into a bioplastic. These monomers are soluble in water, but the leftover parts, the polyolefins or polyamides, are not.” The leftovers can be easily removed by simple filtration and then sent off for a traditional mechanical recycling process where the material is shredded and melted, said Choudhary. 

“Chemical recycling has been a hot topic, but it’s difficult to make it happen at the commercial scale because all the separation steps are so expensive,” said Ning Sun, a staff scientist at the ABPDU, lead author, and principal investigator of this project. "But by using a biocompatible catalyst in water, the microbes can directly convert the depolymerized plastics without extra separation steps. These results are very exciting, although we acknowledge that a number of improvements are still needed to realize the economic viability of the developed process.”

Co-authors Nawa R. Baral and Corinne Scown, experts in technoeconomic analysis in JBEI and Berkeley Lab’s Biosciences Area, also demonstrated that once optimized with a reusable salt solution, the process could reduce the cost and carbon footprint of PHAs by 62% and 29%, respectively, compared with today’s commercial PHA production.

JBEI is a Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Research Center managed by Berkeley Lab. The ABPDU is a collaboration facility supported by the DOE BioEnergy Technologies Office.

 

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Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab’s facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
 
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JOURNAL

One Earth

ARTICLE TITLE

A hybrid chemical-biological approach can upcycle mixed plastic waste with reduced cost and carbon footprint

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Nov-2023