The trucks have lumbered through the capital for years, dumping loads of hot, acrid ash from thousands of tons of incinerated garbage close to playgrounds and schools.

Residents in the soot-stained homes nearby know what to expect: stinging eyes, constant migraines, hacking coughs of black spittle and shallow, labored breaths.

Burning the garbage was supposed to help solve one of Delhi’s most startling environmental crises: the giant mountains of trash that soar nearly 200 feet into the air and eclipse the capital’s skyline — putrid, 20-story slopes of waste that collapse and crush people, or catch fire in noxious blazes that last for days.

The government pushed a revolutionary plan. It promised to incinerate the trash safely in a state-of-the-art plant, turning the waste into electricity in an ingenious bid to tackle two major problems at once.

Instead, the government’s answer to its bursting landfills and boundless need for energy is exposing as many as one million people to toxic smoke and ash, according to air and soil samples collected by The New York Times over a five-year period.

Residents call it a mass poisoning.

We tested the smoke: Lead, arsenic and other toxic substances rain down on surrounding neighborhoods.

The ashes, still filled with hazardous pollutants, then get hauled away in trucks.

We followed the trucks for years — and found them illegally dumping the ashes in crowded neighborhoods like this one, next to schools, parks and homes.

We tested the ashes — and found toxic substances way above safety standards.

We also dug into the soil — and found that a schoolyard and a park were sitting right on top of toxic ash.

Children play in ashes as trucks come to dump more. The chemicals and heavy metals in the air and soil can cause birth defects, cancer and other life-threatening conditions.

Doctors and residents nearby point to a rise in miscarriages, lesions on their skin and frantic trips to the hospital gasping for air.

Graphics by Pablo Robles

Cadmium

Manganese

Arsenic

Lead

Cobalt

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