
New Delhi
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Around 20 million people in India’s capital woke up on Wednesday breathing the most polluted air of any major city in the world, a day after celebrations for the Diwali festival, during which revelers typically set off fireworks and firecrackers.
As of Wednesday, New Delhi’s PM 2.5 concentration – a measure of pollutants in the air – was more than 40 times the World Health Organization’s annualized guideline level, according to Swiss air quality monitoring company IQAir.
New Delhi grapples with severe year-round pollution, but the winter months are typically worst, when millions of farmers in surrounding regions burn stubble in their fields to clear the…