Written by: Kajal Bastakoti - 21108, Grade XI
Posted on: 05 January, 2020
Hats off to we Nepalese people who are really concerned about our standards of living everything from food, clothes to shelter. But alas we breathe this proudness with the air full of gaseous pollutants and don’t care about the poor lungs of ours which is thriving for fresh air and fighting against airborne diseases. This poor engine of yours is not going to be there for you in good condition for a long time.
The main credit goes us (“we people of Kathmandu valley”). This might sound sarcastic but yes this it true to the full extent. Today we are the people of one of the most polluted cities in the world whose PM level (Particulate Matter level) is very high than the WHO Standard. The valley which used to be home to agriculture and natural beauty is now home to many industries such as brick kilns which emits very harmful gas to the air as well as is gradually using the fertile soil to make bricks rather than planting crops. Another thing that our standard demands are fast food and packaged food. We have reached the fullest extent of being lazy to say that we need the fruits ready to eat for us and this takes us to another burning problem “plastic waste management” which to say is really burning us all alive. Being a developing country we are far more behind recycling things as we don’t even upcycle things and we can see people still are burning plastics as a form of disposal which shows how far we lack on development our hands have become that numb that we are not able to separate degradable and non-degradable wastes so that the government can work on recycling at least on some things.
We have the concentration of particulate matter that is five times more than it should be as per WHO’s standard. Despite this, all we do is just walk into pollution and contribute to more pollution. We don’t even take care of ourselves from pollution and forget about such minor things such as wearing a mask and end up inhaling harmful gases such as Sulphur, nitrogen, carbons and finally be hospitalized on the cases of lungs diseases, Allergies and skin cancer and paving the way for ourselves to pre expire or simply decrease our time on this earth not only ours but also we are harming or causing threats to earth's future.
