New Delhi : Delhi schools were ordered to halt outdoor activities due to air pollution after a Supreme Court order. Both the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court have turned their attention to the youngest and most vulnerable victims of the toxic air: school children. Experts have welcomed this move. On Thursday, the Delhi High Court had made an unusually direct observation while hearing a plea filed by minor students.
Justice Sachin Datta had questioned why the Delhi government continued to schedule outdoor sports during the Capital’s most polluted months. He noted that the authorities had failed to safeguard children’s health, and stressed that the sports calendar must be revised to keep outdoor activities out of these hazardous months.
The petitioners’ counsel, had also pointed out that several outdoor sports events had been lined up this month despite the air quality slipping into the ‘very poor’ bracket. She reminded the court that the Department of Education is responsible for preparing the sports calendar, and even produced a photograph shared by a pulmonologist, showing the effect of fine particulate pollution on children’s lungs, to underscore what is at stake.
The Supreme Court’s were devastating. Just a day earlier, the top court, while reviewing Delhi’s worsening air crisis, had asked the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) to immediately issue directions shifting all school sports to cleaner months. The bench said that exposing children to outdoor activities during November and December “amounts to putting school children in a gas chamber,” a remark that underscores both the severity of pollution and the government’s slow pace of response.
The warnings come at a critical moment. Last week, Delhi’s Air Quality Index plunged to the “severe” category, levels at which even healthy adults are advised to stay indoors. Doctors have been warning for years that children are far more vulnerable to polluted air than adults. Studies have shown that prolonged exposure to PM2.5 and PM10 not only reduces lung capacity but can permanently alter respiratory development, trigger asthma, weaken immunity, and affect cognitive performance.
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