India's Severe Ozone Pollution Kills Enough Crops to Feed 94 Million People

India's ozone pollution is a growing problem and now, scientists have announced that it's damaged millions of tons of the country's major crops. In fact, it's caused losses of more than a billion dollars and has destroyed enough food to feed tens of millions of people.

Rising emissions are causing severe ozone pollution in India's most populated regions, like Delhi, where pollution has reached levels comparable to Beijing. Currently, there are no air quality standards in India that are designed to protect agriculture from the effects of ground-level ozone pollution, which is formed when nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and organic compounds react with sunlight.

That's why the researchers decided to calculate the total damage the pollution was doing to crops. They compared emissions estimates from 2005 with data about how much ozone each of four crops could withstand. Plants start to exhibit damage when they are exposed to ozone levels that reach 40 parts per billion or above. Then, the scientists used a computer model to calculate ozone levels during crop growing seasons.

So what did they find? It turns out that surface ozone pollution damaged 6.7 million tons of India's wheat, rice, soybean and cotton crops in 2005. In fact, India could feed 94 million people with the lost wheat and rice crops, which is about a third of the country's poor.

"The (amount of lost wheat and rice) are what surprised me," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The findings reveal the importance of putting emission regulations into effect. Damage to crops means that less food is being produced; this, in turn, means that those near India's poverty line suffer for it. By making some changes, it's possible to potentially increase crop yield. Hopefully, the new study will help spur the action need in order to create new air quality standards.

The findings are published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.