Times of India , Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Correspondent : Neha Lalchandani

NEW DELHI: With nearly all residential societies, malls, offices and homes surviving on generator sets in Gurgaon, serious air pollution is but only inevitable. According to Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) sources, levels of particulate matter exceed prescribed limits for most of the day several times over in the city. An analysis in December 2005 revealed that against a prescribed limit of 80 micrograms/cubic metre, NO2 averaged 283 micrograms/cubic metre. PM10 was a whopping 721 micrograms/cubic metre against a limit of 100. The levels of CO shot up three times to 6,240 micrograms/cubic metre against the permissible limit of 2,000 in the evenings. The alarm bells started ringing then, and matters have only become worse since. According to CPCB, pollution from generator sets stands second only to vehicular pollution, and in a city like Gurgaon, which is completely generator-dependent, the situation is close to getting out of hand. Gensets emit dangerous gases like CO and NOx which have a terrible impact on health thanks to greater personal exposure levels. "Gurgaon is growing at a phenomenal rate and with power supply not sufficient to meet even the current demand, generators will become an essential commodity. Imagine an entire city running on gensets for close to 15 hours in a day and the emissions from it. Sound is not such a problem as most people use acoustic enclosures, but air pollution is definitely something to contend with," said a CPCB official. Acoustic enclosures are essential when one purchases a generator but due to the heavy expenditure involved, there are some who still pick up their sets from unauthorised markets. "Gensets, unlike vehicles, are not registered and it is difficult to say how many sets are being used in the city. The unorganised sector is selling almost double the amount of sets since they are cheaper but they follow no norms to check for pollution," said an official of CPCB. "While emission standards have been set for generators, majority of manufacturing is in the informal sector and monitoring is impossible. As far as use enforcement is concerned, nobody has even given it a thought," said Anumita Roychoudhury of CSE.

SOURCE : Times of India, Tuesday, 04 March 2008