Beate Ritz in The Swaddle — India Has the Most Infant Deaths Due to Air Pollution in the World: Report

Around 1.16 lakh infants in India died due to air pollution exposure in 2019, the most of any other country in the world, according to the State of Global Air 2020 report, published by the Health Effects Institute. Beate Ritz, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, compared India’s indoor pollution to that of Victorian London while speaking to The Guardian. She said, “This is not the air pollution we see in modern cities [in the rich world] but that which we had 150 years ago in London and other places, where there were coal fires indoors. Indoor air pollution has not been at the forefront for policymakers, but it should be.”