MUMBAI: Despite the geographic advantage of being a wind-swept coastal city and improvement in air quality due to an economic lockdown, Mumbai recorded 25,000 deaths in 2020 which can be attributed to air pollution, according to Greenpeace Southeast Asia’s latest analysis released on Thursday. Deteriorating air quality cost the city $3.7 billion ( 26,912 crore) in economic productivity, it said.
Mumbai is second in the country only to Delhi, where deaths attributable to air pollution were 54,000, highest in the world, revealed the analysis. In all, across six big cities – New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Lucknow, an estimated 1.2 lakh deaths were seen to have been caused by air pollution. Total cost of foul air has been $17.7billion for the country.