Dear friends, please avoid playing outside when the level of pollution becomes like an air emergency.
- Keep the house damp and mop up at regular intervals.
- Ask your parents to get a air purifier for home as indoors can be as polluted as outdoors.
- While going to school use a special mask, known as the N95 mask. It is different from the coloured masks that doctors wear while performing surgeries. The N95 mask blocks 95 per cent of the pollutants from entering your respiratory system.
- Look out for the words "NIOSH" written on your mask. It stands for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the US-based federal agency responsible for rating and certifying disposable masks. This way you can be certain that your mask is of good quality.
- Wear the mask tightly over the nose and mouth; and breathe through it.
- Discard the mask when the elastic holding it together becomes loose.
- Some of us are asthmatic or have other respiratory illnesses. They should keep their inhalers with them all the time.
Let us hope that we get to see smog-free winters in future and get to play outdoors without risking our health. Till then, take care!
