Well,

when you have dust allergy, prevent the area of a high percentage of air pollutants, or using face filter masks with low exposure time. AQI red face mask for unhealthy levels as in the attached figures.

Regards

You haven't mentioned how long you're going to be there, but if you're staying for a relatively long time (a few weeks to a few months), it might be worth it to get a houseplant for your room. That should help with the indoor air quality.

As for when you're outside, the only thing that I can think of is to wear a face mask. If you use an inhaler, make sure you have it on you at all times.

I know of no city in the U.S. in which the air pollution over the city is so bad that a moderately healthy person is affected. Air is an exceedingly dilute medium. If you have asthma or a chronic respiratory disease, there is OTC medication (e.g., inhalers) to alleviate that if the air is particularly bad. Plenty of people live perfectly normal lives in cities that have polluted air. To put this in perspective, I grew up in Baltimore during WWII, when the defense plants literally belched black smoke across the city, and neither I nor my schoolmates or their parents were particularly concerned. How about your colleagues and acquaintances who breathe the air of the city you are moving to?

I served on the EPA's National Air Pollution Control Techniques Advisory Committee shortly after passage of the 1972 Clean Air Act. The standards that we helped promulgate were, then as now, best guesses at a balance between requiring controls and allowing polluting industries to exist. I worked with the American Lung Association to try to pin down a relationship between air pollution and asthma, and we found that the trigger for asthma was usually animal dander from the family dog or cat. Even today, the connection between illness and the AQI is tenuous: correlation is not necessarily causality.

Finally, please recognize that rural areas, parks, nature preserves, etc. can be sources of pollutants. Airborne dust is ubiquitous in the U. S. southwest, for example..

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Like all air quality standards, thes

Thank you all for detailed reply, Ruth Weiner I am from India, which is particularly very polluted region often with PM 2.5 above 100 ug/m3 usually.

Have you thought of, or tried, to influence the Government of India to mandate air pollution controls? You have excellent universities in India -- that's where the U.S. movement for air pollution control started. That's what we did in the U.S. The first national air pollution control legislation was passed in 1970, and we had some statewide control before then. I remember testifying about air pollution control in Denver, Colorado in the late 1960's, on a day when the pollution was so bad you could barely see your hand in front of your face. There were four coal burning power plants on the banks of the Platte River which runs right through the City of Denver. One plant was, I believe, shut down, and the others are controlled. Some probably burn natural gas instead of coal -- I haven't kept myself informed about this.

No Ruth, I actually lost hope in struggling for the same, as many do not even think it is a problem unless Delhi like situation happens. Even there, they only react and try to contain the situation, rather than planning and executing strictly for long term. Dust is everywhere here, and that is our bane. Our government is one of highly corrupted in the world, so most of basic requirements of citizens go for a toss everywhere - no good quality water, air, land, and it goes on. I am exploring what best I could do here though I know in a corner of my mind, it could be a losing battle.

We faced a lot of opposition -- pretty nasty and pretty well-funded -- the industries were against us and we were volunteers. Moreover, every big government deals in one way or another with corruption, and the U.S. is no exception. Federal Government activity is determined and controlled by Congress, and members of Congress spend a good deal of time raising money from various sources in order to be elected or re-elected. There is a (possibly apocryphal) story that one of the Senators from Tennessee told President Truman: "We don't care what you do there as long as you do it in Tennessee", and the result was Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

India has a vibrant and active science and engineering community (although a number of Indian scientists and a couple of the Nobel Laureates emigrated to the U.S. ) It seems to me that if the U.S. can clean up its air, other countries with similar industrial and scientific communities could engage in similar efforts, if they had the collective will to do it.

I looked up Indian Nobel Laureates in the sciences:

C.V. Raman (physics) (the Raman spectrum!)

H.G . Khorana (physiology or medicine)

S. Chandrasekhar (physics)

V. Ramakrishnan (chemistry)

Thanks Ruth, thats very comforting, but as you could see its a huge collective effort currently I cannot instigate let alone lead. Very few people realize the long term issue here. Most are hard wired to only attend to immediate threads. Very few realize how PM 2.5 are long term silent killers even when we show facts supporting it. Wondering what best as an individual I could do to protect myself being an asthmatic patient (apart from migrating to a better AQI country, which I highly wish but could not yet do)

If you have asthma, I assume you are being treated for it and I don't know of anything you can do about air pollution except stay indoors when the air is bad.

I have some question about the "silent killer" idea. From literature that I am familiar with, separating the public health effects of smoking (smoking anything), airborne pollen, and chronic respiratory problems like asthma from the effect of air pollutants is difficult, unless you are looking at a completely uncontrolled industrial facility (like a mine), and workers in those generally work with respiratory protection. The respiratory system in an otherwise healthy person is pretty sensitive and is self protecting to some extent -- particles larger than a micron or so in diameter are generally trapped and coughed up . Moreover, even if we had no polluting industries at all, there would be air pollutants.

I also question "deaths from air pollution" as possibly cases of correlation which is not causality.

It was mild so far, manageable but a recent episode for a week, made me look for safe guarding mechanisms to protect further damage. It worsens with time when you continue in same environment, and masks are not comfortable to wear all the time.

Yes, the resp. system is self protecting to an extent, but there is always a threshold, beyond which they simply give up, and we end up with such life long irreversible illnesses? Scientific community is still not conclusive about PM (2.5 ,10) and respiratory issues as causation? Afaik, even if air pollutants may not have caused asthma, they aggravate it depending on pollution.