Lydia Fisher

Lydia Fisher was 21 and a junior at Bryn Mawr College when she came to India—and New Delhi—as a member of her study abroad program SIT: India (School for International Training). Having grown up in Unionville, Pennsylvania—a small town outside Philadelphia with a population of about 600 people—Delhi’s air and noise pollution came as a shock to her, she says. But she wanted to know more about the people and their environment and it brought her back to India three years later, this time as a FulbrightNehru Student Researcher.

At Bryn Mawr, Fisher majored in international studies with a focus on environmental and public health issues. She has been in India since March 2022, researching the effects of air and noise pollution on the human body and society. She is affiliated with Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai and advised by Dr. Amita Bhide. Her air pollution work is focused on the residents of the M-East Ward—a municipal area in Mumbai and home to one million people. The area is also home to a range of major air pollution sources, including one of Asia’s largest garbage dumping grounds and the largest biomedical waste facility.

Fisher says her work revolves around studying air quality, monitoring and governance, and looking through regulations. Her research, says Fisher, will inform policy on air pollution education and the treatment of air pollution-induced health issues. “The human body breathes 11,000 liters of air every day. Our research is to find out what exactly is in the air that people are breathing,” she says.

Research has found that perception of air pollution has a major impact on decisions on exposure, and is usually studied in social and economic contexts. For example, a person who usually stays in an air-conditioned environment might find a five-minute exposure to outdoor pollution more uncomfortable than a roadside vendor, even though the effects of the pollution on the body are the same in both cases.

The second component of her research—noise pollution—focuses on the effect of elevated street noise on residents and traffic police in Mumbai. Mumbai is one of the loudest cities in the world and Fisher says ambient street noise averages around 70 to 80 decibels. Traffic cops bear the brunt of this noise with horn blasts and vehicles coming at them from every direction. Fisher says her work investigates the health consequences of exposure to elevated traffic noise in their daily work, contextualized by their understanding of the issue and their access to treatment.

Fisher says long-term exposure to high noise levels leads to hearing loss and stress as well as an increased risk of hypertension and diabetes. “There is a lot of research on this, but most of it comes from Europe and the United States,” says Fisher. But, she explains, noise and its effects on people have to be studied in social and cultural contexts. For example, she says, hearing loss is related to genetics, environment and exposure. “And India has a very high rate of hearing loss,” she explains.

Currently, Fisher is working on a survey of 400 residents of the six settlements in the north of M-East Ward. The survey investigates indoor and outdoor air pollution health effects, and treatment choices at the local level.