If you are a family of five living in Lahore, would you act to save twenty years of your family's life? You should - because the air you are breathing right now is silently stealing those years from you. Lahore is now ranked among the most polluted cities in the world, where the average citizen is expected to lose five years of life due to toxic air. That means a family of five will collectively lose two decades - not to war, not to hunger, but simply to breathing. And the threat is even more severe if your home includes young children or elderly parents, because the cost of breathing polluted air is cruelly higher for vulnerable lungs.

Once, motivational speakers preached that everyone has the same opportunities when it comes to sunlight, water, air, time and happiness, but maybe it does not hold true if one has to breathe air with having AQI several times higher than the allowable limits - courtesy systemic failure of successive governments, indifference and neglect from the concerned quarters!

Pakistan burns........

© The Express Tribune