New Delhi opens first ‘smog tower’; expert says ‘absolute waste’

Move aims to reduce the air pollution blamed for thousands of premature deaths every year, but experts are sceptical.

India’s capital New Delhi has opened its first “smog tower”, aimed at reducing the air pollution blamed for thousands of premature deaths every year, but experts are sceptical. Concentrations of tiny deadly particles in New Delhi’s air regularly exceed safe limits by up to 20 times, particularly in the winter when its 20 million people are enveloped in a noxious grey blanket of smog. Forty giant fans on the 25-metre (82-foot) tower will pump 1,000 cubic metres of air per second through filters that halve the number of harmful particulates in a radius of one square kilometre (0.4 square miles), according to the engineers.