Hariram Bopa has no choice but to inhale wood smoke.
In a one-room house in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India, he makes a living making ravanhatta, a traditional wooden bowed instrument considered the The predecessor of the violin. He used fire to heat iron rods to drill holes in wood, and the smoke evoked bittersweet memories of his father, Ugmaram, also a famous Ravanhatta maker. business.
“One day,” his father used to say, “this smoke is going to kill us all.”
Ugmaram Bopa died of chronic asthma 15 years ago. Now, Hariram, 42, is starting to suffer from the disease.
“I never paid attention to this when I was young,” Hariram Bhopa said. “As I get older, I can see the effects of it.”
Wood fires produce harmful pollutants such as particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide.
To make matters worse, climate change is exacerbating air pollution around the world, especially as global warming has led to a significant increase in wildfires in the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia and other regions. A growing body of research shows a sharp increase in lung injuries, especially in countries like India where extreme heat and pollution are increasing.
While air pollutants from burning wood pose a direct threat to instrument manufacturers in India, rising temperatures due to climate change are exacerbating the problem as they are exposed to more ozone and secondary pollutants.
“In the past, artists only suffered from asthma after the age of 65, but now, even at the age of 35, asthma has become common,” explains Bopa. “Generations of artists before me had made ravenhatha and they also had no access to clean fuel, but no one had ever experienced a problem of this magnitude.”
Air pollution is a global threat
Across the Pacific in California, short-term exposure to PM2.5 air pollutants and extreme heat increases the risk of death, according to a 2022 paper published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. exceeds the sum of the individual effects. PM2.5 is particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns, which can penetrate deep into the lungs and cause a variety of health problems.
“The excess mortality risk associated with simultaneous exposure to extreme heat and PM2.5 is approximately three times the estimated impact of exposure to either extreme heat or PM2.5 alone,” said Mostafijur Rahman, the paper's lead author and an assistant professor at the university. .
Air pollution and extreme heat can cause oxidative stress, in which the buildup of harmful molecules called reactive oxygen species overwhelms the body's ability to neutralize them.
“Antioxidants help clean up these molecules, but particulate air pollution and heat disrupt this balance,” Rahman explains.
In addition to chronic effects, heat and air pollution can lead to heart disease and stroke.
This problem has become one of the biggest threats to human health in India. PM2.5 pollution has shortened the average life span in India by about 5.3 years.
“On days exposed to extreme heat and extreme air pollution, we observed an almost 40 percent increase in cardiovascular deaths,” said researcher Dr. Rob McConnell, a professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. .
Extreme heat makes air pollution worse
“Under high temperatures and high solar radiation, volatile organic compounds released from soil, vegetation and industry combine with nitrogen oxides released mainly from the transportation sector to form secondary air pollutants ozone, which further reacts in the atmosphere to form secondary air pollutants Particulate matter, said Nidhi Singh, a postdoctoral researcher at the IUF-Leibniz Institute for Environmental Medicine in Germany. Higher temperatures also promote the formation of more ozone and secondary organic aerosols, leading to the formation of more particulate matter, creating a vicious cycle. .
In extreme heat, the body attempts to cool itself by breathing faster and deeper. As ventilation rates increase, the body takes in more air pollutants, and cooling efforts hinder the body's ability to detoxify harmful chemicals, exacerbating the risk.
Exposure to ozone can cause coughing, shortness of breath, respiratory infections, asthma attacks and lung inflammation. In addition to respiratory illness, long-term effects include damage to the nervous and reproductive systems, cancer, and metabolic disorders.
To understand the interaction between air pollution and summer heat, researchers analyzed data from 482 locations in 24 countries in a paper published in April 2023. Publishing in Environment International, they found that several air pollutants significantly increase the dangers of high temperatures and increase mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
endangered heritage
In the village of Manakapur in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, 66-year-old Narayan Desai heats three 17cm iron rods with firewood for two hours every day to make another traditional musical instrument. — Shehnai, a clarinet with a double reed and a trumpet-shaped metal at one end that rings the other side. He can't afford cleaner energy to practice the disappearing art of handcrafting the centuries-old wooden instruments popularized globally by the late Ustad Bismillah Khan .
“Working with iron rods was never easy as it gave me a lot of third-degree burns in the past, but I never knew the smoke would one day take away my art,” Desai said as he spoke Take a long pause to breathe. He could no longer concentrate on playing the instrument he had made. “I tried to play it in 2022 and collapsed because my lungs were severely weak,” he said.
In 2021, Desai suffered a heart attack and doctors advised him to stop doing this work. He kept at it, and a year later, he began to suffer from high blood pressure. His family didn't stay in the house while he heated the rods.
“I find it difficult to breathe,” said his wife, Sushila, who is in her 40s.
Meanwhile, slow demand for his instruments and meager wages took their toll on Popa, who took 15 days to hand-make a ravanhatta, for which he was paid INR 3,000-5,000 (35-47 Dollar).
“How can I afford clean energy when no one is willing to pay high prices for musical instruments?” he asked.
In Jaisalmer, artists create ravinhatha between March and June, when tourism in the area plummets due to the hot summer.
“Over the past three years, the heat here has become unbearable,” Bopa said.
Yet no one came to him to learn how to make the instrument. Today, only a few artists are left in Jaisalmer to make Ravinhatha. His children and neighbors often saw him experiencing shortness of breath, coughing and vision loss.
“The younger generation doesn't want to enter this industry because of the health risks,” he said.
Dinkar Aiwale, a flute maker from Kodoli village in Maharashtra state, died in 2021 of fibrosis, a condition in which lung tissue becomes damaged, scarred and causes breathing problems It happens briefly.
Aiwale spends over 150,000 hours crafting the most exquisite flutes.
Later in life, he experienced difficulty breathing while playing the flute, a warning sign of danger, but he would not stop.
“Besides my health, I’m worried that this art will die with me, and I don’t want that to happen,” he told me in 2019.
poor solution
The World Weather Attribution Study shows that human-induced climate change has made heat waves in South Asia hotter in 2022 and 2023, and the likelihood has increased 30 times.
A study published in the British Medical Journal found that more than 2 million people die from air pollution in India every year, with extreme heat making the situation worse.
Singh said air quality monitoring systems must be strengthened and expanded beyond cities. She also recommended issuing early warnings for extreme weather events so people can take precautions during this period, and conducting routine health checks to identify vulnerable groups. Ensuring that you get the medicines you need in a timely manner is crucial.
“But an important step has to come from governments. They have to put in place strong regulations to curb high emissions and high temperatures,” she said.
According to the State of Global Air 2024 report, nearly 50% of ozone-related deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) occur in India, followed by China and Bangladesh.
In addition to asthma, Bopa is now showing symptoms of COPD. But he continued to burn firewood and make musical instruments.
“I know this art is going to kill me one day,” he said. “But even if I stopped making instruments, I would starve to death. There is no solution.
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