Dr Asif Qureshi of the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad and his team used a computer simulation of air pollution across India to test what would have happened if new technologies had been fitted to the power plants. They looked at two different technologies and found that controlling sulphur was the most effective single step, but applying both technologies together yielded the greatest gains. As many as 720,000 early deaths could have been avoided over a 10-year period if the power plants had been cleaned up in 2010. Particle pollution would have reduced by up to 11% across the country. The research team found that people living around power plants would have experienced the greatest benefit, up to a 28% reduction in particle pollution, leading to about a 17% reduction in early deaths.