NEW DELHI: The national capital continues to breathe under ‘severe’ quality of air for the third consecutive day on Monday. According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the air quality index (AQI) at 8 pm in Delhi stood at 402 which falls under the ‘severe’ category.
According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD) officials, the source of this pollution is ‘locally generated’ pollutants, which is accumulating owing to slow wind speed.The IMD had earlier predicted that the air quality was likely to improve from Monday onwards as the wind speed is likely to pick up. On Saturday, Delhi’s AQI was 401, 382 on Friday, 341 on Thursday.
The wind speed remained slow allowing the accumulation of pollutants generated locally, VK Soni, head of the IMD’s environment research centre said. “Easterly winds carrying moisture also led to the formation of secondary particulate matter. All these factors together pushed the air quality in the ‘severe’ zone,” he said. The average air quality remained ‘severe’ in Ghaziabad and Noida for the fourth day in a row, while it stayed ‘very poor’ in Faridabad and Gurgaon, according to a government agency data on Monday.
The CPCB said in a notice that the main areas of concern are pollution hotspots — Narela, Anand Vihar, Mundka, Dwarka and Punjabi Bagh in Delhi and Faridabad, Jhajjar, Noida and Bhiwadi in the NCR.
As per the analysis and number of complaints received, south, south-west district, north, north-west, and north east districts of Delhi and Jhajjar, Bhiwadi, Gurugram north, Gautam Buddha Nagar and Noida in NCR are the areas that need to take actions to control air pollution due to construction/demolition activities, open dumping of garbage, road dust and industrial emissions, the notice added.