Two of every five residents suffer from lung, liver or genetic disorders due to highly-polluted air in the capital city of 14 million, the privately-run Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute said in a report seen by AFP Monday.

"We have found that polluted air has also altered immunity and caused blood-related abnormalities among many of the victims tested by us," an institute official said from the agency's headquarters in the eastern city of Calcutta.

The federal Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) hired the prestigious research institute in 2002 to conduct a three-year survey of the sitution in New Delhi, one of the world's 10 most polluted cities according to the World Health Organisation.

The institute surveyed 2,379 people through questionnaires and clinically examined 1,270 people aged between 20 and 75 at special medical camps, said B. Sengupta, member secretary of the CPCB.

It also examined 4,671 children aged between eight and 16 and said New Delhi's younger generation were up to three times more prone to respiratory disorders compared to children in the same age group tested in the marshy forests of the Sundarbans near Calcutta.

The researchers also said most of the worst-affected victims of pollution-related diseases were those living in the heart of New Delhi, taxi drivers and blue-collar workers.

"What we are finding is extreme because each time we set up a camp, pollution levels change and so do the health parameters," said the institute official, who would not be named.

The CPBP's Sengupta played down the findings of the institute, one of India's established cancer research centres.

"They have made the report sound very alarming but it is not so because air quality here has improved over the years," he said, listing a series of measures to clear up New Delhi's choking smog.

Sengupta, however, conceded the national capital of more than two million vehicles was more polluted than cities such as Bombay, Calcutta and Madras.

Non-governmental watchdog Centre for Science and Environment hailed the report as "pathbreaking" and said the institute's work had also blown a hole in government claims it is cleaning up India's air pollution, which kills tens of thousands every year.

"We have serious problems with the extremely poor monitoring capacities of government agencies because the data they generate is (only) broadly indicative," said Anomita Roychowdhury, head of the centre's air pollution control unit.

"But this report is pathbreaking because the researchers actually mapped the lungs of people to monitor the pathological changes from the daily bombardment of pollutants," Roychowdhury told AFP.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.