Chulha smoke, metal and stone dust causing chronic lung disease in Faridabad, says doctors

Faridabad: Air pollution due to smoke from chulha and angithis, metal dust from machines in factories, and dust from stone cutting in Aravalis is leading to poor lung health among people in and around Faridabad, informed experts at Amrita Hospital. Doctors say they are seeing alarmingly poor lung health among people in the region, with many of them coming with advanced stages of lung disease after ignoring symptoms for years.

Dr Arjun Khanna, Head, Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Amrita Hospital, Faridabad, shared “Women in villages in Faridabad and rural areas around Delhi are still cooking food on traditional chulha or angithis, which cause significant smoke pollution. Even a few years of daily exposure to chulha smoke causes as much lung damage as someone smoking cigarettes for 30 years. Due to this, we are seeing large number of young women patients in their 30s and 40s suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a condition typically found in elderly cigarette smokers who have been smoking for decades. Many of these women are from well-to-do families in villages, but they still prefer to use chulha that burns wood or animal dung.”

He further added “Treatment of COPD is not very difficult. Some basic medicines, breathing exercises, and avoiding smoke can make one’s life return to normal, even though the disease cannot be reversed.”

Commenting on the industrial pollution and its health complications, Dr Sourabh Pahuja, Consultant, Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Amrita Hospital, Faridabad, said “Workers in industries are constantly getting exposed to pollutants and substances they work with, such as metal dust, leading to occupational lung diseases like asbestosis and silicosis. Faridabad falls in the Aravali range, with stone-crushing and stone-cutting as an industry. Many people from factories and stone-crushers are coming to us, suffering from lung disease due to long-term exposure to pollutants at workplace.”

The doctors said another challenge is the reluctance of people in rural areas to allow children suffering from asthma to use pumps or nebulizers. “Asthmatic young children studying in school are not allowed to use pumps or nebulizers by parents due to fears that it will become a lifelong habit and hamper their marriage prospects. This is a deep social prejudice in rural and semi-urban areas that needs to be tackled,” informed Dr Pahuja.