The two-year-long project sponsored by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was launched this summer. The Taj is the most visited monument of the country, with approximately 50-70,000 tourists visiting it everyday. Sometimes, the visitor numbers even touch a lakh. This is causing a lot of detrimental effects on the marble structure.

Neeri director Satish Wate told TOI that though a lot of measures have been taken, especially over the past two decades, to protect this Mughal monument, there has been no study on the effect of tourist activities. "ASI assigned this project to Neeri to generate data on various parameters related to human activities within and adjacent to Taj. The institute will be monitoring nine parameters during the three seasons. We have already installed some instruments this summer and measured these parameters. The project report will be handed over to ASI next year," he said.

The results will help ASI evolve a tourist management plan to minimize the effect of anthropogenic activities and initiate environmental protection measures to conserve the monument. "Monitoring visitor behaviour, its impact on the air quality within the monument premises in worse case scenario is a major component of the two phase study. This will help ASI devise strategies to handle existing and projected tourist flow in a planned manner," said Padma Rao, principal investigator of the project and head of air pollution department at Neeri.

In the first phase to monitor ambient air continuously inside the premises, sophisticated differential optical absorption spectrophotometer (DOAS), an open path monitoring system, has been installed. It can measure nine gaseous pollutants at an interval of one hour continuously. These pollutants are carbon-dioxide released during breathing, ammonia, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, methane, ozone, toluene and benzene. It will involve a lot of modelling tests as well to extrapolate the results and anticipate their effects in the long run.

Twice a year, when an Urs is held at the Taj, the basement is so crowded that one cannot even breath there. After the people leave, a huge amount of sweat in the form of water has to be taken out from the place. But this is just one activity. Tourism brings a large number of vehicles very close to the structure. The cooking activities around the monument as well as open drainage also result in a lot of emissions, which have a severe effect on the marble.

Box

STUDYING THE TAJ

Monitoring air, noise, water, soil/land use, solid waste, biological, socio-economic environment

Study of areas with activities associated with tourism, both direct and indirect, viz. parking, ticketing, Taj premises, Mehtab garden, roads approaching Taj, nearby areas/villages, Yamuna river stretch, nearby areas (backside of Taj)

Study includes environmental impact vis-a-vis tourist movement in this zone

Tourist related environmental parameters of concern are temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, oxygen, light heat, noise, vibration and ventilation (air circulation inside mausoleum)

Social issues related to tourist activities also form part of the study

Study over three seasons to address spatial and temporal variations of impact

Long term data regularly monitored and collected by ASI with respect to ambient air quality and meteorology shall also be analysed to understand past conditions and current status to build up short and long term scenarios for protection of the monument ecosystem