Air Pollution: Delhi is not among the 10 most polluted cities in Asia, this Indian city on top

Saurabh Verma
New Delhi. Delhi, which is often in headlines for its bad climate, did not make it to the list of top 10 most polluted cities in Asia this time. Based on the World Air Quality Index (Air Pollution AQI Level), in the data available on Monday, 5 cities were from China, 1 from Mongolia and the other four were from India. In the latest data, pollution in Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar was measured at alarming levels with the Air Quality Index (AQI) at 724, the highest in the list. At the time of filing this report, Gandhinagar was followed by Pan Bazar, Guwahati (665), Khindipada-Bhandup West, Mumbai (471) and Bhopal Chauraha, Dewas (315).

It has been said in the report that this winter the air in Delhi-NCR has been better than before and after 2018 this time the cleanest air was seen. An AQI between 0 and 50 is considered ‘good’, 51-100 ‘moderate’, 101-150 ‘unhealthy’ for sensitive groups, 151-200 ‘unhealthy’, 201-300 ‘very unhealthy’ as per the index scale defined by the US-EPA 2016 standard. and 300+ are considered ‘dangerous’.

The Center for Science and Environment (CSE), in its latest analysis of air pollution levels, claimed that the Delhi-NCR region has witnessed the cleanest air this winter since large-scale monitoring began in 2018. The CSE report states that the World Air Quality Index project, started in 2007, aims to promote air pollution awareness for citizens and provide integrated and worldwide air quality information.

Delhi’s air is the cleanest this time in the last 5 years
The concentration of air pollutants in Delhi was 160 micrograms per cubic meter for the October-January period, the lowest level recorded since large-scale monitoring began in 2018-19. It added that ‘the PM2.5 level, calculated by averaging monitoring data from 36 Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS) stations located in the city, was 17 per cent lower than the seasonal average for the winter of 2018-19. Based on the subset of the oldest 10 stations, there has been an improvement of about 20 per cent. It also said that the number of days with severe or more than severe air quality was the lowest in the last five years. This winter, on an average the city was in the ‘severe’ or worse category on almost 10 days, which is much lower than 24 days last winter and 33 days in 2018-19 winter, the report said.

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Tags: air pollution, Gandhi Nagar, New Delhi, Top Polluted City