NEW DELHI: If you are in Delhi, breathing clean air is a dream, even in summer months. Environment ministry data shows that the capital did not witness even one good air quality day in the last two years, and the worse is that poor and severe air quality days accounted for 66 per cent.
The capital’s air quality is assessed as per the Air Quality Index (AQI) which classifies the air into good, satisfactory, moderate, poor, very poor, and severe categories. Each of these categories is decided based on value of air pollutants and their likely health impacts.
As per the AQI data recorded in Delhi from May 1, 2015 to March 17, 2017, there were ‘zero’ good air quality days of the total of 665 days. Even the number of satisfactory days was not much. There was just 47 satisfactory air quality days which are just about 7.06 percent of the total days monitored.
What is the most worrying part is that the poor, very poor and severe air quality days amounted to nearly 66.6 percent (443 days) of the total period monitored. This means that of every five days, three were of at least bad quality. As far as moderate air quality days are concerned, there were only 26.31 percent (175 days).
“The government is taking all necessary steps to mitigate air pollution. The high value of Particulate Matter is the main concern and measures are being taken to mitigate this problem,” said Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave.
Delhi is infamous for being among the top polluted cities in the world. It was even labelled as the world’s most polluted city by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its report released in 2015. Zabol in Iran replaced it in 2016 as the world’s most polluted city.
The major pollutants measured under AQI include Particulate Matter with a diameter less than 10 micrometres (PM10), Particulate Matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), Carbon Monoxide (CO), ozone (O3) and Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2).
In past few months, the Supreme Court and National Green Tribunal have taken up the issue of severe air pollution in the city and have directed governments of Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab to control high levels of air pollution.
For instance, NGT gave directions to control crop burning, construction dust, road dust, waste burning and phase out old diesel and petrol vehicles. The Supreme Court had even levied high fees of diesel vehicles entering the National Capital to control the air pollution.
In 2016, Delhi government implemented the Odd-Even car rationing scheme but there were different reports on its efficacy.
A graded action plan was also approved by the Supreme Court that specified steps to be taken whenever air quality deteriorates beyond a certain level.
Experts feel that measures are in place but poor implementation remains a cause of worry.
Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general of CSE, said the problem is that all agencies wake only during emergency situation.
“We lack efforts to reduce pollution all through the year and swing into action only when there is alarming situation and that needs to be fixed. All implementing agencies must realise that action should go throughout the year to ensure pollution levels remain under control,” said Bhushan.