What’s in the Air in Sydney and New Delhi?

Meanwhile, in Sydney and New Delhi, residents are suffocating as toxic smoke clouds linger in the cities.

Transcript

00:00[♪ unreleased music playing ♪

00:30It's terrible, very difficult to breathe and I don't have any health issues.

00:36Worst we've ever seen, never seen anything like this.

00:38We look out on the city, can't see it today, it's terrible.

01:00I'm protesting for my right to breathe because it's completely taken away.

01:30And I need to live, it's my right, you can't just take it away.

01:34There's smoke all around, people are having trouble breathing.

02:05I have a headache every day I wake up and it's suffocating to breathe also sometimes.

02:11Inflammation in the nose, nostrils and eyes also, it kind of burns.

02:34New Delhi, Sydney, California last month, if you watch the news it looks like the entire world is on fire

02:47and there's air pollution going through the roof wherever you're looking.

02:50So what's happening? Well, climate change.

02:53Changing climate means more extreme events and hotter summers, much stronger winds

02:59means that the forests in Australia and California have now turned into tinder boxes

03:04that are ready to burn and keep burning for weeks and weeks on end,

03:08polluting the cities in the entire region.

03:10In New Delhi, the monsoon patterns have been changing over the past years,

03:13so now farmers between the summer and the winter have to actually burn their crops

03:17in order to make time to plant rice in time for the winter season.

03:21So what this means is pollution is actually becoming worse

03:24because of the pollution that creates climate change.

03:26Scientists agree that things are only going to get worse over the next years and decades to come.

03:30Why should we care? Because the air we breathe is incredibly important for our health.

03:34If you breathe in polluted air, over time the particles that you breathe in will add up into your body

03:38and create inflammatory infections.

03:41They make asthma get worse, they stunt the development of children's lungs,

03:45they're bad for pregnant women, but they're also linked to cancer,

03:48they're thought to be linked to mental problems like Alzheimer and degenerative diseases.

03:55All in all, pollution is absolutely terrible.

03:57And it's so bad that when there's spikes in air pollution,

04:00you can actually see the number of people admitted in emergency rooms and hospitals go up.

04:04So what can you do about it?

04:06Well, number one, get informed.

04:08Avoid breathing pollution.

04:10Avoid cars, avoid products full of chemicals in your everyday life.

04:13Use apps to know when smog is high and what you can do to avoid it.

04:17Number two, pollute less.

04:20We're all part of the problem, we can be part of the solution.

04:23Leave your car at home, walk, bike, use transit instead.

04:26It's good for you, it's good for your health.

04:28And then number three, organize to fight climate change.

04:31Ask your government to pass a carbon tax because the day polluting becomes costly,

04:35companies will start doing it and we'll all be breathing better.