For the past few
months Hasan Zaidi's phone has been ringing nonstop with calls from desperate
residents in Pakistan hoping to get their hands on his newly invented air
purifier as smog blankets the country. "Some days, I had so many calls
that I couldn't answer," says Zaidi during a recent interview with AFP in
his workshop. Tired of choking on putrid air, Zaidi spent six months perfecting
his homemade device as he looked for a low-cost solution to battle the
increasingly toxic scourge overwhelming Pakistan.

During this winter alone the 31-year-old engineer has already sold some 500
units, which are priced at just 16,000 Pakistani rupees ($103), but admits to
refusing hundreds of orders in recent weeks due to lack of manpower and
resources. In cash-strapped Pakistan Zaidi's "Indoor Forest"
purifiers are cheaper than imported models, which typically cost about two to
five times more. "Now it is less of a luxury and more of a
necessity," explains Sadia Khan, whose company Autosoft Dynamics recently
acquired a dozen of Zaidi's purifiers so his 180 employees can "breathe
safely".

135,000 deaths

In the past five years, air pollution has worsened in Pakistan, as a mixture of
low-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal crop burn off, and colder winter
temperatures coalesce into stagnant clouds of smog. In 2015, 135,000 Pakistanis
died due to poor air quality, according to a study published in the scientific
journal The Lancet. Pollution tends to be at its worst in the country's eastern
province of Punjab during winter, particularly in the 12-million strong city of
Lahore near the border with India.

In November schools were closed for several days across the province with the
level of PM2.5 - tiny particles that get into the bloodstream and vital organs
- repeatedly exceeding 200 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The World Health
Organization's recommended safe daily maximum is a measurement of 25. Pakistan
is ranked one of the worst countries in the world for air quality and Lahore
consistently ranked in the top 10 most smog-hit cities, according to the
pollution monitoring site AirVisual.

But Tanveer Waraich, director general of the Punjab's environmental agency,
dismisses those figures, saying pollution readings cited by monitors and
activists are not from "authentic machines". "To say that
Pakistan and Lahore are among the top polluted cities... this statement is not
based on facts," he says, but concedes the country's air quality is
largely unacceptable. Public awareness about the issue is growing due to
increased activism on social media about the dangers of pollution and the dire
challenges climate change is bringing to Pakistan.  

Yann Boquillod, who co-founded AirVisual, said subscribers to the site from
Pakistan have increased tenfold this year. "In Pakistan, there was a
problem but no one knew about it. Pakistanis are (now) mobilising,"
Boquillod says.

'Gas chamber'

With officials slow to act, ordinary Pakistanis have increasingly taken
measures into their own hands. In 2016, Abid Omar launched the website
PakistanAirQuality (PAQ) dedicated to compiling data about air pollution in the
country and publishing its findings. According to PAQ, Lahore only experienced
"10 hours" of good quality air based on WHO standards during the
first eleven months of 2019. Conversely, air quality in the city oscillated
between "bad" and "hazardous" for a total of 223 days so
far this year. The smog "has made our lives miserable," laments a
pedestrian in Lahore buying a mask.

Pressure on officials is building. Ahmad Rafay Alam, one of the few
environmental lawyers in Pakistan, filed a suit against the Punjab provincial
government on behalf of his daughter and two other teenagers in November,
saying officials having underreported the problem. Outside of activism and
lawsuits, others are trying to minimize their exposure to the harmful toxins in
the air.

"Last year, it was just bizarre how everybody seemed not concerned,"
says Ayza Omar, director of interiorsource.pk, a site offering high-quality
face masks and other anti-smog products. "This year, it has been crazy. We
were sold out within the first two months," she adds, saying they sold
thousands of masks this year compared to dozens last year.

In an attempt to improve the situation in Lahore, a group of environmentalists
are planning to unveil an eight-metre-high air purifier in attempt to remove
harmful particles from the air.  Maryam
Saeed, one of the designers, says of the device: "It will help to ease the
problem, but it won't change the whole picture." - AFP