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Comment by dagmx | Hacker News Reader

I’ve had to stop visiting Delhi in the winter for my health. I left India over a decade ago and used to visit every winter for Christmas.

At some point I stopped being able to function properly there. I’d have constant migraines, nose bleeds and the last time I went I was passing out regularly.

The pressure inversions causing the higher smog density in winter is just horrific. Coupled with these farmers burning crops, it’s a nightmare.

There are days when you’re driving and you can’t see the vehicle in front of you.

I miss home, but I’ll really only now go back in the fall or spring. Summer is too hot to enjoy a visit.

Fall has the advantage of being after the monsoon so it has cleared a lot of the air and the temperatures are much cooler.

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I have been to Delhi many times in my previous jobs. On one occasion one of my colleagues got massive breathing problems and needed hospitalization and oxygen. On really bad days cleaning your nose turned the tissue black.

Air purifiers are not able to keep up with the pollution especially if your house is not air tight. What works well is to make use of positive pressure systems with high performance filters [1].

[1] https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/blog/positive-p...

These descriptions remind me of Pittsburgh back before the Clean Air Act in the US— one apparently had to pack a second white shirt with them to work as the first was soiled with smoke by the end of the day. Buildings were and are still stained black decades after air quality had improved. My environmental history professor while studying in Pittsburgh was being treated for lung cancer in spite of never having smoked, and he thought it likely due to how smoky the city used to be.

Pittsburgh's downtown and many poorer neighborhoods were located in deep valleys full of heavy industrial installations.

I hope India makes the same progress on air quality as it develops that many richer countries have. Seeing things like its maturing domestic electric scooter industry is a reason for hope.

The first time a coworker in Mumbai shared their screen for something I was shocked to see that the Windows weather widget in the taskbar had "Smoke" as an option for the current type of weather.

Just come on down to Seattle every August and September now, you can experience it too :/

What's that about? Pollution coming in on the jet stream?

Fires in the area. See also: California, Colorado

A few years ago when we had some e-coli water quality problems in our town which lead to boil-water advisory. It was eventually tracked to the badly maintained backflow valves and couple of dead rats in places or something. And it just so happened that we had a power outage after a storm knocked over a tree and hit the transformer. And there were fires. So. We went to a dinner where there was a great mix of south indians, north indians, someone from pakistan, and one of them said exasperatingly "I can't drink water, the power goes out, the smoke is choking - it's like I am in India again!"

Not so odd honestly. It’s pretty common in the US, especially in the west coast due to wildfires.

It’s about as annual as it is in India at this point for everyone there.

Why is this shocking? Smoke is, unfortunately, fairly common in some areas, especially during seasons where there may be fires. A weather widget that doesn't have that as an option would be fairly negligent, as it's relevant to the weather outside.

Geez, I hope they don't get a deadly fog event... https://www.horrorbound.net/blog/deadly-london-fog

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