I hope you enjoyed the place as much as I did even with the pollution!
I think most there don't really understand the health hazard or how bad it is for them because it's all they know. Put them in Kansas City for a week and send them back and I promise you'll see some people freaking out heh.
Its not just that. Even if people are aware of health hazards, they think they can make exceptions for themselves because one person isn't gonna make things worse.
I lived first half of my life in relatively cleaner Himalayan regions, and when I moved to Delhi, I was almost always sneezing. I already was miserable living there, and now its worse. :(
In my poor design vocabulary, I pointed out at the Sun, and joked to my designer friends that one of them put a vector mask on the Sun.
I couldn't go around much after the friend's wedding. I wanted to do a 6am jog at Rajpath and India Gate. But a friend joked that it was pointless to look at "India Gate as a silhouette". At about 1pm when going to Humayun's tomb, I passed by Rajpath and realized it wasn't a joke. I was scared to venture out anymore after a day of roaming. I hope to visit again sometime.
So no nobody is going to "freak out"