‘Delhi has company; 15 Indian cities report bad air quality’

                           

Other than Delhi as many as fifteen of seventeen Indian cities showed levels of air pollution that far exceed the prescribed Indian standards, this as per a ranking of 17 cities covered by the National Air Quality Index (NAQI) which was released by Greenpeace (India) on Tuesday.

“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, Muzzafarpur and Faridabad, amongst others - that would justify the triggering of a ‘Red Alert.’ Even the government’s own, largely inadequate NAQI data reveals that 23 of the 32 stations across India are showing more than 70 per cent exceedance of the national standards,” said Sunil Dahiya, campaigner, Greenpeace India.

“The pollution levels in a few Indian cities have the embarrassing distinction of having exceeded the toxic levels of Beijing and other Chinese cities, demonstrating levels at least ten times higher than the WHO standards, making air pollution truly a national emergency,” added the report.

The pollution figures were recorded for the time period between April and November.

As part of the first such initiative on analysing air pollution data, Sunil Dahiya added, “The NAQI, in its present form, fails to acknowledge the scale of the problem. Data is only available in seventeen cities, which is a shockingly low number considering the size of our country.’’

Greenpeace has said that 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.

Meanwhile India’s NAQI system remains poor, with most prominent cities lacking real time monitoring stations, far behind the standards followed in the top 20 biggest cities of European Union, US and China.

Greenpeace is calling for an ambitious and systematic Clean Air action plan, with focused targets, clear timelines and demonstrable accountability towards public health. ``This crisis is an opportunity to test India’s emergency response plan and design coordinated action plans for a ‘Clean Air Nation,’’ noted Greenpeace.