Air Quality Analysis – October 2022

Air pollution is a problem faced all across the country. Despite several steps announced by the government and formation of committees and action plans, things on ground leave a lo to be desired. The matter takes urgency in the North during the winter months when the situation becomes critical.

Environics has installed low cost portable air monitors in several locations in the city of Korba which has large number of coal mines, power plants and other industries to capture the extent of air pollution. Devices have also been installed in Delhi and Ranchi. List of devices and locations can be seen in the Annexure. Below is a brief representation of data captured by these devices. The analysis has been done for two reporting periods – 1 October to 31 October 2022 and Jan to October 2022 (till date)

Section 1 – Data Analysis for period Jan to October 2022

 Table  above show the Average Monthly AQI in different locations. The graph and data clearly showcase the winter months when AQI comes under dangerous levels and summer and monsoon months when the air quality is Satisfactory. This data shows when urgent steps for air quality improvement need to be undertaken on a war footing. Although, air quality improvement should be a year long activity and the base load factors like vehicle exhausts, industrial exhausts, construction dust etc which are year wide activities need to be controlled better so that seasonal factors like biomass burning, cold conditions, calm winds etc can have minimal impacts. Currently in the entire country the base load of air pollutants is very high and any short or seasonal factors take the air quality into severe one which can be very hazardous for health. During this period, Delhi recorded the worst AQI in the month of January. Out of 10 months, for 6-month AQI in Delhi was above 100 while Korba had AQI above 100 for 8 months. The overall data for Korba shows that Korba Air is more polluted than Delhi.

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