timesofindia.indiatimes.com
TNN
December 16, 2015
NEW DELHI: An evaluation of the National Air Quality Index (NAQI) data maintained by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) released on Tuesday has revealed that as many as 15 out of the 17 cities that are being monitored fail to meet the ambient air quality standard by a considerable margin. The evaluation, done by Greenpeace India, also found that infrastructure to monitor air pollution is abysmal in India despite such severe levels of pollution.
For instance, compared to an average of four real-time air quality monitoring stations in all big cities in the US, around 5 stations in the major cities across Europe and 8 stations in major Chinese cities, India has an average of just 2.5 stations across the only 17 cities that are being monitored.
The evaluation also found Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Faridabad among many others to be extremely polluted — between July and November for instance, Jaipur was below the desired air quality standards on 100% of days, Delhi on 93% days, Faridabad on 69% Patna on 98% of days.
The AQI is an index for reporting daily air quality — it says how unhealthy the air is through numbers and colour codes. India started issuing AQI from March last year. Several pollutants like PM 2.5, CO, Ozone, NO2 and SO2 are monitored as part of the AQI.
“As the political capital – and indeed, the most polluted of all cities – the bad air in Delhi gets the most attention. But, scratch below the murky surface, and you will find concentrations of PM2.5 in several other cities – Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Muzaffarpur and Faridabad, among others – that would justify the triggering of a ‘red alert’, like Beijing does. Even the government’s own largely inadequate NAQI data reveals that 23 of the 32 stations across India are showing more than 70% exceedance of the national standards,” said Greenpeace India campaigner Sunil Dahiya.
Beijing has a four-level alarm system that imposes restrictions on outdoor activities, usage of personal vehicles, emissions from factories and power plants depending on how poor the air quality is.
Dahiya added, “The NAQI, in its present form, fails to acknowledge the scale of the problem. Data is only available in 17 cities, which is a shockingly low number considering the size of our country. There is an immediate need to diversify and upgrade the manual stations to ambient air quality monitoring stations feeding data to the online NAQI portal. The existing system needs to include short- and long-term solutions and advisories.”
The evaluation, that also compares PM 2.5 concentrations between July to November 2015 among some Chinese cities like Jinan, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Indian cities monitored by AQI, showed most Indian cities to have exceeded China’s levels.
Greenpeace is calling for an ambitious and systematic Clean Air action plan with focused targets, clear timelines and demonstrable accountability towards public health.
CPCB officials said they haven’t seen the evaluation by Greenpeace India yet but claimed that air pollution in Delhi is strongly influenced by meteorology. “For about 50 days in a year Delhi has good air quality and about 27% of the time in a year the conditions are very calm and windless, thus accentuating pollution. This is true for entire northern India,” he said.
