It has been claimed in a recent report that air pollution is behind causing many deaths in India. While there are many factors like high blood pressure, tobacco, poor nutrition etc which push mortality rate, it has been claimed that air pollution is at fifth spot behind causing deaths in India in 2010, as per country specific data on Global Burden of Diseases (GBD) report.

The research showed that there is significant loss to human life due to indoor air pollution and direct and indirect tobacco smoking, which in itself is a scary indicator. It has been said by Aaron Cohen, who headed the expert group on air pollution for the study, that lung cancer caused 20% deaths, while 6% died of high blood pressure in India.

It is to be noted that unlike many western countries, India doesn't incubate any standard for indoor air pollution. There is dire need to understand the root cause of the problem in order to improve the already dithering state of health care.

"Around one million lives, especially of women, can be saved every year in India, if all solid fuels used for cooking in rural India is replaced with LPG", said Kalpana Balakrishnan, Director of health ministry's Centre for Advanced Research on Environmental Health, who was part of the GBD study.