Errands, commutes and car trips
Practical ways to cut exposure on essential trips, whether on foot, by metro, auto or car.
You can’t avoid going out, but you can cut how much polluted air you breathe on the way. Exposure depends on how polluted the air is × how long you’re in it × how hard you’re breathing.
Before you leave
- Check the nearest station’s hourly reading and its timestamp. If the trip can wait, pick a cleaner hour (often midday or early afternoon in winter).
- Combine errands into one trip, and order groceries or medicines for delivery on the worst days.
- Take the mask you’ve already checked fits. See masks.
On foot or by bike
- Choose quieter streets. Pollution is highest right beside heavy traffic and drops noticeably even one street back.
- Walk on the side of the pavement away from the kerb and avoid waiting at junctions where vehicles idle.
- Keep the pace easy. Hard exertion means deeper, faster breathing and more pollution inhaled. Save workouts for indoors on bad days.
Metro and buses
- Air-conditioned metro coaches are usually better than waiting at a roadside stop. Keep the mask on at street-level stations and while walking to and from them.
- Shorten curbside waits: time your arrival using live transit info.
Car and taxi
- Windows up, air on recirculate through polluted stretches and in traffic. This sharply reduces how much outside air comes in.
- On long drives, switch to fresh air for a few minutes every 20–30 minutes, ideally on a cleaner stretch, so carbon dioxide doesn’t build up and make the driver drowsy.
- Replace the cabin air filter before the season, ideally with a PM2.5-grade or activated-carbon filter. See car cabin filters.
- In an open auto-rickshaw or on a two-wheeler, a well-fitted respirator matters most.
Taking an older relative to an appointment
- Arrange door-to-door pickup and let them wait indoors, not at the gate.
- Bring prescribed medicines, a spare respirator if they use one, and water.
- Don’t skip medical care because of pollution. Missed check-ups and medicines are a bigger risk than one well-managed trip.