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.
They blamed their illnesses on a hulking facility built right next to their homes: an industrial plant burning the city’s garbage and turning it into electricity.
The plant towered over the neighborhood, and residents were certain it was causing their debilitating symptoms, which included blinding headaches, lesions on their skin and trips to the emergency room gasping for breath.
We wanted to see what the science showed.
We reached out to the plant’s managers to ask about testing their emissions by placing air monitors in the smokestacks. They refused to speak with us.
So we turned to the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, often referred to as the M.I.T. of India. Scientists there agreed to work with us and use their air-monitoring machines to take samples.
We climbed multiple rooftops overlooking the plant. We needed one that was right next to but directly downwind from it, with no obstructions, yet far enough from a major highway so the machines would pick up as few other pollutants as possible. We set up the machines and started testing.
The results were alarming. The air contained staggering amounts of toxins, including high levels of lead, arsenic and cadmium, a dangerous heavy metal often found in batteries. The cadmium levels were 19 times the safety threshold set by the E.P.A.
We also set up control tests: We sampled the air at another location several miles away, to see if the neighborhood around the plant had a heavier concentration of heavy metals.
It did, by a lot.
The toxins we found can cause a host of illnesses, including a rare form of Parkinson’s disease, fetal problems, brain developmental disorders and bone, kidney and heart disease.
The government appeared to be aware of the risks. We found that internal government reports had discovered that the plant pumped as much as 10 times the legal amount of dioxins — a key ingredient in the notorious Agent Orange herbicide deployed by the U.S. military in the Vietnam War — into the skies above Delhi.
And that was only part of the problem.
What happened to the toxic ash after thousands of tons of garbage was burned every day? Where did it go?
So, we staked out the plant and followed the trucks filled with ash as they left the facility and drove across the city, the wind kicking up their uncovered loads.
The trucks drove to two separate residential neighborhoods. In the first, the ash was being dumped in a defunct mine. The government had built a park, clinic and school on top of the site. On one of our many visits from 2020 until 2023, we found a temporary fairground installed, a Ferris wheel spinning above the poisonous earth.
We took samples of the dumped ashes and tested them in a private lab, which found cadmium levels that were on average eight times higher than the E.P.A.’s threshold.
We even dug into the soil under the park and schoolyard and found they were sitting on top of ash.
In the second neighborhood, the trucks dumped their loads on a knoll overlooking a park and hundreds of homes. Samples taken from this site also showed dangerous levels of cadmium.
Residents there said the ash seeped into their homes, covering groceries, books and furniture.
In all, The Times collected about 150 air and soil samples over a five-year period, from 2019 through 2023. Some of the testing and reporting was interrupted by the pandemic and lockdowns, but we kept at it and worked with experts at the Indian institute. We also worked with scientists at Johns Hopkins University, who helped analyze the findings.
Indian officials have praised such plants as part of the nation’s “Green Growth” future. In a world where cities are growing, space for landfills is limited and garbage is abundant, turning waste into energy is expected to become an increasingly popular solution.
It can also be done safely, experts note — with the right controls in place. But this plant was cutting corners, according to several senior employees at the facility and a Columbia University professor who visited it, who described how vital safety measures had been skipped to reduce costs.
Residents say they are paying the price.
Chanchal Pal, a doctor, suspects that pollution from the plant may have caused a respiratory issue that led to the death of her mother, who had moved in with her. The plant sits across from Dr. Pal’s home, and she had bought it with her life savings.
“I will feel guilt forever,” Dr. Pal said, but “this is our lifetime investment. What can I do?”
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