New Delhi: Every six minutes, one Indian died prematurely because of air pollution from road transport in 2024. Every 34 minutes, a child developed asthma linked to the same pollution. Together, vehicle emissions were responsible for an estimated 90,000 premature deaths in India — second only to China’s 1.7 lakh — and 15,300 new paediatric asthma cases in 2024, according to a new study by International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).The study says an accelerated shift to zero-emission vehicles could save 17 lakh lives in India by 2050.The health burden is particularly severe in Delhi-National Capital Region. Although NCR houses only about 5% of India’s population, it accounts for 9% of transport-related premature deaths and 23% of new childhood asthma cases. Within Delhi alone, road transport pollution was linked to an estimated 2,800 premature deaths and 1,500 new paediatric asthma cases in 2024.The estimates are based on national vehicle and fuel-use data, emissions inventories, air-quality modelling, population data and Global Burden of Disease health-risk estimates to quantify the health impacts of road transport pollution.It states that India accounted for 13% of global premature deaths attributable to road transport emissions in 2024. If 100% of new vehicle sales become zero-emission by 2045, such a transition could cut annual premature deaths from transport pollution by 55% and new paediatric asthma cases by 85% by mid-century compared with the current policy trajectory, said researchers.In heavily polluted parts of NCR, road transport emissions alone exceed World Health Organization’s annual NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) guideline for all sources combined, while Delhi’s population-weighted exposure to transport-related PM2.5 reached 13 micrograms per cubic metre — more than 2.5 times the WHO guideline for total PM2.5 exposure.“The burden is starkly uneven. NCR accounts for nearly a quarter of India’s road transport-attributable childhood asthma cases while housing only about 5% of the population,” said Lingzhi Jin, senior researcher at ICCT and co-author of the study. Accelerating the transition to zero-emission vehicles in these high-exposure regions is one of the most direct ways to protect public health, she emphasised.Calling electrification the only long-term solution to eliminate vehicle exhaust, Amit Bhatt, India managing director at ICCT, said, “Vehicles on the road can emit significantly more pollution under real-world operation than what is measured under laboratory testing. The only way to eliminate tailpipe emissions entirely is through electrification.”The report also points to the outsize role of heavy-duty vehicles. Though trucks and buses constitute only a small share of the fleet, they accounted for 79% of tailpipe NOx emissions and 64% of PM2.5 emissions from road transport in India in 2024, making freight electrification a key priority.Researchers also argued that cleaner electricity, stronger emission norms and faster phasing-out of the older, polluting vehicles would further amplify the health benefits of transport electrification.
