Clean Air Day: “Clean air should never be a privilege,” Says Dia Mirza as She Talks About the Challenges Faced by Her Son, Shares a Terrifying Experience

Dia Mirza has always been vocal and candid about climate and health, while advocating for a better tomorrow. On the occasion of Clean Air Day, the actress shared a deeply personal experience of parenthood, recalling a ‘terrifying’ episode involving her son, who faced respiratory issues to the extent that he was ‘unable to breathe’. From his premature birth to having to rush him to the hospital, Dia Mirza shares it all on a platform that brought her together with architects of the Paris Agreement.

Recalling her son’s birth, Dia shares, “He was born extremely premature which means his airwaves (air passages) were narrow at birth, and it takes them much longer to get stronger. Therefore, they are (premature babies) a lot more susceptible to getting unwell and their frequency of getting ill is higher than a child who has had a full term. I remember that he coughed non-stop for six hours and no matter what we did, it just wouldn’t stop. It was excruciating and unbearable. We are parents who have seen him through some pretty terrifying experiences right from his birth, including his birth. He was born in the sixth month, he was 820 gms, he was in the NICU for over two months, he went through life-saving surgery twice.”

Assuming that the challenges were over, Dia Mirza continues, “We have been through all of that, and we had thought it was all behind us until the pollution got to him. He was almost 2 years old, and we had to rush him to the hospital and we discovered that he was unable to breathe. Coughing was his body’s way of trying to cope…”

Mirza further recalls her son’s sports day, which was conducted when pollution levels were high. She shares how he refused to meet his friends and teachers because he was wearing a mask and felt uncomfortable in it. “He wore his mask and he got to the playground..he watched his friends from a distance, he refused to go and meet them and his teachers because he was wearing a mask. He felt uncomfortable about it, and this was not a small thing,” she says.

Highlighting the scale of the crisis and the unequal burden of polluted air, she said in her latest video observing Clean Air Day: “In 2021, air pollution was linked to 2.1 million deaths in India, globally more than 700,000 children under the age of five died from causes linked to air pollution. But this burden is not shared equally. Communities living beside highways, landfills, construction sites, factories, and power plants face greater exposure; so do street vendors, traffic police, sanitation workers and construction workers, people who work outdoors and cannot retreat indoors when the air becomes dangerous. They are on the frontlines of polluted air.”

The actress believes that “Clean air should never be a privilege,” while acknowledging her own position of privilege and the protection it can afford. She says she is extremely conscious of the fact that “we come from a place of privilege. We are able to protect our children at some level. But there are so many children in our country and in the world who are in street situation and are exposed to all of this all the time with no protection.”