Delhi air pollution and children: the lungs that pay the price
Eleven Delhi schoolchildren took the smog to court and got their games moved. What Delhi air pollution does to children, and what is still undone.
In November 2025, as Delhi’s air turned “severe” again, a group of 11 schoolchildren went to the Delhi High Court. Every winter, they said, they were made to run, jump and compete in government-scheduled zonal and state tournaments during the worst weeks of the smog season. Holding sports events then, their petition argued, was “a clear violation of the children’s fundamental right to life under Article 21”, Storyboard18 reported. The children were not named in reports, and IPB is not naming them either.
They won. In August 2026, the Delhi government told the court that “all games end in October 2026”, before the smog peaks. It is a small, practical victory, and it tells a larger story about Delhi air pollution and children: it took schoolchildren going to court to get the city to take their lungs into account. With the 2026 smog season now starting, here is what the evidence says about what this air does to young people, and what has and has not changed.
What the smog does to young lungs
The best-known study of Delhi children’s lungs was done by the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute, Kolkata, for the Central Pollution Control Board. Over three years it tested 11,628 Delhi schoolchildren aged four to 17 and compared them with 4,536 children in rural West Bengal and Uttarakhand. It found reduced lung function in 43.5% of the Delhi children, against 25.7% in the comparison group, according to the study’s executive summary. One in three Delhi children (32.1%) reported at least one respiratory symptom in the previous three months, against 18.2% of the others.
Children are more exposed than adults because they breathe faster, spend more time outdoors and, when running, breathe through the mouth, which skips the nose’s natural filter. Dr Arvind Kumar, founder trustee of the Lung Care Foundation, told the High Court that long-term studies link high exposure to fine particles (PM2.5) in childhood to permanent reductions in lung growth and capacity.
The cost does not stop at childhood. A study published in The Lancet Planetary Health in July 2024, by researchers from Karolinska Institutet, Ashoka University, Harvard and others, found that short-term exposure to PM2.5 above the World Health Organization’s limit was linked to 11.5% of all deaths in Delhi, the highest share among 10 Indian cities studied, Karolinska Institutet said. Across the 10 cities, it estimated about 33,000 deaths a year. The WHO’s daily limit for PM2.5 is 15 micrograms per cubic metre; India’s is 60.
How the courts stepped in
The children’s case came up before Justice Sachin Datta on 19 November 2025. The Directorate of Education argued that the School Games Federation of India set the national calendar, and that most games were played indoors anyway. The judge was not persuaded. “I am very sorry to say but you are shirking your responsibility,” he told the Directorate’s lawyer, Careers360 reported. “As far as Delhi is concerned, you must start your games calendar immediately after the board exams.”
The same day, the Supreme Court asked the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) to consider directions to shift school sports competitions in Delhi–NCR “to safer months”, The Tribune reported. On 14 December 2025 the CAQM directed NCR governments to postpone physical sports competitions, saying “adverse air quality poses a serious risk to the health of children”, All India Radio reported.
On 3 August 2026, the Delhi government filed an affidavit and a new circular revising the Delhi State School Games calendar so that every event ends in October. Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma accepted it as meeting the petitioners’ grievance and closed the case, Devdiscourse reported. The circular warns physical education staff of action if the schedule is not followed.
Where the 2026 season stands
The new calendar is about to be tested. On 19 October 2026, Delhi–NCR’s average air quality index was “moderate”, but hotspots such as Loni (243), Knowledge Park III in Greater Noida (225) and Jahangirpuri (217) were already “poor”, IPB News reported. Farm fires, one seasonal driver of the smog, are shifting south: between 15 September and 6 October, satellites logged 118 fires in Madhya Pradesh against 88 in Punjab. Punjab then picked up speed, with 174 by 13 October against 126 at the same point a year earlier.
Under the revised Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), schools move to hybrid or online classes only at Stage III or IV, and only when an official order says so. Last winter, the CAQM invoked Stage IV, the strictest level, in January 2026 as the index crossed 400.
What the authorities say
The authorities’ answer so far is the set of measures now in place: an earlier sports calendar, the sports directions from last winter, the GRAP stages and enforcement drives that began in early October. The Union Environment Ministry has asked for tighter ground monitoring of farm fires in Punjab and Haryana districts, and the CAQM has issued rules for drone monitoring this season.
What none of these measures does is clean the air. Moving a football final to October protects the players for one day. The children still walk to school, sit in classrooms and play in parks in the same air for the rest of the winter.
The wider picture
Delhi’s pollution is a year-round problem that gets worse in winter. Vehicles, construction dust, industry and waste burning pollute all year; stubble smoke and still, cold air trap it close to the ground from October to January. And Delhi is not alone. Across the 10 cities in the Lancet study, including Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru, PM2.5 exceeded the WHO’s daily limit on 99.8% of days.
Cycling is one of the cleanest ways to get around, and IPB once looked at the growing trend of biking to the office in India. In winter Delhi, even that choice comes with a lungful of smog.
What would change it
The sports calendar shows that protecting children is possible when someone is made responsible. The same approach could be applied further: air purifiers and sealed classrooms in government schools in the worst-hit areas, a public warning system that tells schools on the morning of a bad day to keep children indoors, and India’s PM2.5 standard brought closer to the WHO’s. The lasting fixes are harder: crop diversification away from paddy, a working market for straw, cleaner transport and dust control all year, and a plan for the whole Indo-Gangetic plain rather than just the capital.
Those decisions sit with the CAQM, the Delhi government’s Directorate of Education, the Union Environment Ministry and the state governments of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The 11 children who went to court got their games moved. The air they breathe is still waiting.
Check the air before children go out: use the CPCB’s SAMEER app or the CAQM website, and follow official orders from the CAQM, the Directorate of Education or your district administration rather than forwarded messages.
More stories beneath the headline in Third Eye. For daily air-quality news, follow IPB News.
Sources: Storyboard18, 17 November 2025 · Careers360, 20 November 2025 · Devdiscourse, 3 August 2026 · CPCB and Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute, study of Delhi schoolchildren · Karolinska Institutet, 4 July 2024 · The Tribune · All India Radio · IPB News, 20 October 2026
