How We Found the Toxins Threatening Delhi’s ‘Green’ Energy Future

We climbed rooftops and set up machines — each the size of a refrigerator — to take samples of the smoke billowing our way.

We parked outside the plant to wait for the trucks to leave, following them across the city to residential neighborhoods where they dumped their loads of acrid ash.

We dug through the ashes after they were dumped and gathered samples for the lab. The noxious fumes stung our eyes and gave us crippling migraines, even while wearing N-95 face masks.

I was a correspondent in New Delhi when I started reporting this article back in 2019. Pollution was a constant for virtually everyone, and it inspired my husband, the photojournalist Bryan Denton, to focus on the issue.

Pretty soon, he found harrowing accounts of residents in one of Delhi’s upscale neighborhoods falling sick. Nebulizers had become a regular crutch in many households. A doctor there said miscarriages were higher than ever before.