Protect Children From Delhi Pollution

Why Children Are Affected More

This is not simply a smaller version of the adult problem. Several things combine, and they
compound rather than add.

• They breathe more air per kilogram of body weight. A child takes in
  proportionally more air than an adult, so the same concentration delivers a larger dose
  relative to their size.
• Their lungs are still developing. Lung growth continues well into
  adolescence, which makes the exposure window a developmental one rather than only an
  immediate one.
• They are closer to the ground. Vehicle exhaust and road dust are densest
  near ground level — and a small child’s breathing height sits in it.
• They are more active outdoors. Running multiplies air intake. A child at
  play draws in far more than an adult standing nearby.

At Home — Where the Hours Actually Are

Count the hours honestly. Sleep alone is nine to eleven for a young child. Add homework,
meals and play indoors, and the home is where the overwhelming majority of the day happens.
That is where effort returns the most.

Make the bedroom the clean room

One room, done properly, beats a purifier wandering between rooms:

• Seal it. Weather-strip the window frames, fit a brush seal at the door
  bottom. This costs a few hundred rupees and matters more than the appliance.
• Filter it. Size the unit for that room’s volume, not for the coverage
  printed on the box — treat the printed area as roughly double the room it truly handles.
• Keep the door shut while it runs. An open door means it is filtering the
  flat, which it cannot.
• Add nothing that burns. No incense, no mosquito coils, no candles in a
  child’s room. Mosquito coils in particular are a significant particulate source in a small
  closed space.

Handle the kitchen

Cooking is a large indoor source, and in an open-plan flat the living area shares the
kitchen’s air directly. Run the extractor before the oil goes in and for ten minutes after, and
keep small children out of the kitchen during high-heat cooking.

Is It Safe to Play Outside?

Parents want a threshold, and the honest answer has two variables rather than one:
the number and the exertion. A child sitting on a bench and a child playing
football are having very different exposures in identical air.

Air quality	Reasonable approach
Good to Satisfactory	Normal outdoor play, no restriction
Moderate	Normal play. Watch any child with asthma more closely than usual
Poor	Shorten outdoor sessions. Avoid sustained hard exercise. Prefer the afternoon
Very Poor	Avoid prolonged or strenuous outdoor activity. Brief, gentle time outside only
Severe and above	Keep it indoors. Move activity to a filtered room

One qualification worth stating plainly: children need physical activity, sunlight and time
outside, and those are real health needs rather than optional extras. The goal for a bad season
is to shift and shorten outdoor time — afternoon rather than early morning, gentler
rather than harder — not to eliminate it for four months.

School Days and School Closures

School is the second-largest block of a child’s day and largely outside your control. What
you can do is ask specific questions rather than general ones: are classrooms kept closed on
severe days, is outdoor games moved indoors, is assembly held outside during peak hours. Schools
respond better to concrete questions than to concern in the abstract.

Closures under severe conditions are usually announced at short notice, often the previous
evening. The stress they cause is mostly logistical, and mostly solvable in advance: know who
covers childcare, and have indoor activities that do not depend on improvisation.

Treat a closure day as a clean-air day, not a normal day at home — windows shut, filtration
running in whichever room the child is in, no ventilation window, nothing burning.

Newborns and Infants

Infants breathe faster than older children, their lungs and immune systems are still
developing, and they spend nearly all their time in a single room. That last point is the
useful one: one room decides most of a newborn’s exposure, which makes it an
unusually tractable problem.

• Seal and filter that room properly, and keep the door closed.
• No incense, coils, candles or smoking anywhere in the home — not merely not in that
  room.
• Ventilate it during the afternoon, briefly, when outdoor air is at its best.
• Keep the cot away from the window, which is where infiltration concentrates.

Masks are not appropriate for infants. Reduce exposure by controlling the environment, not
by covering the child’s face.

Masks for Children — An Honest Answer

Masks are the most visible intervention and among the least reliable for children, for a
single reason: fit.

An N95 works by sealing against the face so air passes through the filter rather than around
it. Most are sized for adults. On a child’s face the seal is usually poor, and a poor seal
drops real-world protection far below the rating. Cloth and surgical masks do very little for
particles this size regardless of who wears them.

If a mask is used, it should be a properly child-sized respirator, checked for a reasonable
seal, and worn only for the limited period it is genuinely needed. It should not be the reason
a child spends longer outside on a severe day than they otherwise would.

When to Stop Reading and See a Doctor

This guide is about reducing exposure. It is not a substitute for medical care, and there
are situations where an appliance is the wrong response:

• Any breathing difficulty — visible effort, fast breathing, drawing in at
  the ribs or neck, or an audible wheeze.
• A cough lasting more than two to three weeks, or one that repeatedly
  wakes the child at night.
• Reliever inhaler needed more often than it used to be, for a child who
  already has asthma.
• Any blue tinge to the lips — this is an emergency, not a consultation.

Pollution can trigger and worsen respiratory illness. It is not a diagnosis, and a child with
persistent symptoms needs a doctor rather than a better filter.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I protect my child from air pollution in Delhi?

Focus on where the hours are. Most children spend the majority of their day indoors at home or at school, so sealing gaps around windows and doors, keeping one filtered room for sleeping, and avoiding indoor combustion — incense, candles, unextracted cooking — reduce far more total exposure than anything you can do in the hour they are outside.

Is it safe for kids to play outside when AQI is 300?

At ‘Very Poor’ levels most paediatric guidance advises avoiding prolonged or strenuous outdoor activity for children. Exertion matters as much as the number, because a child running draws in far more air than one sitting. Brief, low-intensity time outdoors is a different proposition from a games period or football practice.

Do masks work for children in pollution?

Less reliably than for adults, and the reason is fit. An N95 only performs when it seals against the face, and most are sized for adults. A poorly fitting mask on a child gives much less protection than the rating implies. Reducing time and exertion outdoors is more dependable than relying on a mask.

What should I do when schools close due to pollution?

Treat the day at home as a clean-air day rather than a normal one: keep windows shut, run filtration in the room the child is in, skip the ventilation window, and add no indoor sources. Closures are usually announced at short notice, so having childcare and an indoor activity plan arranged in advance removes most of the stress.

Do newborns need extra protection from pollution?

Infants breathe faster than older children, their lungs and immune systems are still developing, and they spend nearly all their time in one room — which makes that room the single highest-leverage thing to get right. Keep it sealed, filtered and free of combustion sources, and take any breathing difficulty in an infant to a doctor promptly rather than managing it at home.