Schools in New Delhi shut until November 5 due to severe air pollution

Schools in the Indian capital will be shut until Nov. 5, the city government said, as residents breathed the season’s worst air for a third straight day.

As farm fires from New Delhi’s neighbouring states sent swathes of smoke into the capital, the city’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal ordered schools to be closed, the minister said in a tweet he posted in Hindi.

Earlier on Friday, a government-appointed environment panel declared Delhi’s air pollution a public health emergency.

Government-monitored indices that track air pollution hit 500 in several parts of the capital; the maximum recorded by the government’s Central Pollution Control Board. Levels above 400 indicate severe conditions that put people with healthy lungs as well as those with respiratory illnesses at risk.

Via Reuters/India Today

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