BENGALURU: The lockdown from March 25 has been good for the lungs of Bengalureans as the city’s air quality has improved significantly, say researchers at Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC) who carried out a comparative analysis of the city’s air quality index. The Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) Air Quality Monitoring process recorded 64 air quality index “which is satisfactorily good air condition as on April 15, whereas the air quality index value was 87 in April, 2019,” the research found.
Incidentally, according to the data of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), on March 29, the lockdown had improved Air Quality Index (AQI) to satisfactory levels in nearly 90 per cent of the 103 cities monitored by the agency. According to the AQI value, the range between 0-50 is considered “good”, 51-100 is “satisfactory”, 101-200 is “moderate”, while beyond that, it is considered “poor” -- and with each increasing level, the adverse consequences on health multiply.
Sunil Nautiyal, one of the researchers, told The New Indian Express that the improvement in air quality shows that “such lockdowns might be necessary to tackle climate change. Right now, this is a forced lockdown and hence we see the difference in the environment.
But, we may not be able to handle the consequence of climate change.” Improved air quality sustained in Bengaluru over the last few weeks due to emission reduction also reflects the magnitude or scale of pollution contributed by vehicular emission and industrial activities, he stated.
According to the analysis, Bengaluru has 1,600 industries with category ‘red’, which must have mandatory in-house pollution monitoring. “The analysis of data on ambient air quality parameters across nine monitoring stations of Bengaluru to assess the impact of lockdown has apparently stressed the need for extensive data from a greater number of representative sampling sites,” it said. However, monitoring pollution for the purpose of emission reduction requires understanding of concentration, trend and behaviour of individual parameters. “Availability of authentic data with spatially justified collection points which are representative of all the variations in landscape characteristics, is the primary requirement in this regard,” the analysis said.