NEW DELHI: In Delhi and its adjoining area, people wake up amid thick dust with lower visibility. The dust-raising wind has engulfed the whole National Capital Region, which made people either sneeze or cough, and it puts Delhi on top of the table of the global map among the most polluted big city.
India’s meteorological department (IMD) said that dust-raising winds have prevailed over Delhi-NCR since 6 AM, which reduced the visibility up to 1100 meters at IGI Airport. However, yesterday’s visibility was over 4000 meters.
According to scientists, there have been intense heating temperatures over the region, mostly above 40 °C. It caused the dry soil over the region, compounded by scant rainfall activity. The strong gusty winds prevailing over the area since midnight caused the dust. The dust concentration has gone up multiple times.
“The PM10 concentration at 4 AM was 140 µg/m³ and went up to 775 µg/m³ at 8 AM in Delhi” says Dr VK Soni, a scientist at IMD.
“It is a mainly because of strong gusty winds prevailing over the area at night. Dust will settle soon”, he further said.
According to Switzerland-based organisation IQAir – which tracks global air quality in real-time in collaboration with United Nations agencies, non-profit organisations and different governments – states that PM2.5 concentration in Delhi is currently 80.7 times the WHO annual air quality guideline value. According to WHO, the PM2.5 should be 5 µg/m³.
An AQI value over 300 represents hazardous air quality and below 50 the air quality is good. Currently, the AQI of Delhi is a whopping 1653, and the main pollutant is PM10.
Globally, air pollution cause the death of around 7 million people and cause billions to suffer air-pollution-related illness.
However, dusts are also detected over south Maharashtra and north Karnataka, eastern states like Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal.
Chinmay Khadke, a scientist at IMD, says dust is prevailing over the other regions. However, at higher level, the impacts are not visible like in Delhi-NCR, Haryana, Rajasthan, and West UP.
Currently, the air quality index shows that Delhi is in hazardous categories.
Rank City US AQI
1 Delhi, India 423
2 Lahore, Pakistan 167
3 Wuhan, China 155
4 Busan, South Korea 154
5 Chengdu, China 153
Source: IQAIR, Time: 11:15