Every year eight million visitors flock to the Taj Mahal, drawn to its marble face, towering spires, and green gardens. But this monument to love, famously described as “a teardrop on the cheek of time” by India’s first Nobel laureate, is now at risk of being lost forever. Dense smog created by human activity is starting to discolor the marble, turning that once-pristine teardrop a sickly shade of yellow.
Besides inflicting devastating losses on India’s cultural history and economy, these airborne impurities also threaten the people of Agra, the city in which the Taj Mahal resides.
So who’s to blame? There are several factors: heavy traffic, wood-burning crematoriums, smoke from neighboring factories, and Agra’s growing population, the last of which demands more and more water. As the Yamuna River dries up, it risks sliding the Taj Mahal off its picturesque banks into a sea of mud.
But perhaps the biggest concern to the Taj Mahal’s future is bureaucratic incompetence, a point vividly illustrated by the threat of municipal solid waste (MSW), everyday items like plastic bottles, newspapers, clothes, and food. Instead of being properly deposited at landfills, much of this trash is burnt out in the open. What results is a thick blanket of toxic smog, some of which gets into the lungs of Agra’s residents, and some of which eventually finds its way to the Taj Mahal.
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Dr. Ajay Nagpure from the University of Minnesota published a paper on India’s MSW problem in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
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“We studied the open burning of municipal solid waste in Delhi and Agra,” Nagpure said in an interview. “According to our results, Delhi burns about 190 to 246 tons of MSW everyday, which is 2−3 percent of the total MSW generated…For Agra, this number is alarming: 223 tons/day, which is 24 percent of the total.”
The findings are worrisome. New Delhi, the capital of India, burns only 3 percent of its municipal solid waste, whereas Agra burns about a quarter. The resulting smoke directly impacts Agra’s great monument.
“We found that black carbon gives a greyish colour to the [Taj Mahal’s] surface while… brown carbon and dust results in yellowish-brown hues,” says Dr. S.N. Tripathi of the Indian Institute of Technology.
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But surface discolouration isn’t the only problem. Parts of the mausoleum are full of holes, and in some places the facade has actually crumbled. Insects and acid rain have eaten away at portions of the exterior.
Faced with the irreparable loss of India’s most popular monument, the government has taken measures to preserve it. Last year, the Supreme Court ordered all wood-burning crematoriums near the Taj Mahal to be removed and replaced with cleaner electric ones, while Agra’s state of Uttar Pradesh banned the burning of cow dung, which serves as a cheap source of fuel but generates significant levels of brown carbon, the same kind that’s turning the Taj Mahal yellowish-brown.
In addition to preservation, restoration work has also been undertaken. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) periodically applies Fuller’s earth, a lime-rich plaster which soaks up dirt and grime from the marble pores in an attempt to revive its original luster.
Like most beauty treatments, however, this one is superficial. Professor R. Nath, a noted historian and one of the most prominent voices calling for better conservation of the Taj Mahal, warned that applying Fuller’s earth “would only deface the monument.” And it has, causing portions of the marble to become patchy and “leukodermic.”
The effects of Agra’s airborne pollution aren’t confined to the Taj Mahal. “The situation of Agra with respect to air pollution is bad,” says Nagpure. “We have PM10 data from 2006 to 2012 [including]
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