India on Monday launched the National Air Quality Index (AQI). The index monitors the quality of air in major urban centres across the country on a real-time basis.
At present the AQI includes information from 10 cities — Delhi, Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow, Varanasi, Faridabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
According to the environment ministry, each city in the index will have six to seven continuous monitoring stations. And each station will have an AQI display board.
Further, the index considers eight pollutants — Particulate Matter (PM) 10 , PM2.5, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, ammonia and Lead — and their likely health implications.
The AQI assigns unique numbers, colours and descriptions to different pollution levels to indicate air quality in cities. It is believed to simplify comprehension of air quality data.
Under the system developed to demarcate quality there are six AQI categories: good, satisfactory, moderately polluted, poor, very poor and severe.
In future, the environment ministry will expand the index to 22 state capitals and 44 other cities with more than a million residents.
India’s AQI has been developed by the Central Pollution Control Board in consultation with IIT-Kanpur and an expert group comprising medical, air-quality professionals and other stakeholders.
Countries such as the US, China, Mexico and France already have implemented smog alert systems. They also take emergency pollution control measures to bring peak pollution levels down.
At present, India’s AQI will be used to inform people about air quality of their city every day and to provide advisories on health consequences.
The idea is to alert people of possible consequences based on which they can adopt adequate precautions on ‘bad air’ days.
Last year, the World Health Organization had stated that India had 13 of the 20 most-polluted cities in the world. Delhi was named the filthiest city of them all.
Ajith Kumar S
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