Exclusive: Green cover isn't working. Delhi still most polluted city

India Today , Monday, August 05, 2013
Correspondent : Neetu Chandra

It is one of the greenest national capitals in the world. Its metro transit system caters to around 23 lakh passengers daily and government buses are running on clean CNG. But Delhi continues to remain the country's most-polluted city. A study funded by the Ministry of Science & Technology has identified the metropolis as a "high health risk" zone, stating there is an alarming rise in the level of outdoor particulate matters (PM) in the city.

"The pollution in Delhi has increased by 21 per cent in the last 10 years and is persistent. For more than 50 per cent of the day, the pollution is high in the city and is sustaining for long periods. This is posing a major health risk to its people," said Dr Sagnik Dey, assistant professor, Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, IIT Delhi, who led the research team. "Humans, if exposed to particulate matter for a long time, are at a high risk of respiratory and heart diseases," he said.

As cities such as Meerut, Kanpur, Agra, Patna, Kolkata and Mumbai are also facing rising levels of air pollution, the researchers have called for generating a national health database and carrying out cohort studies at both urban and rural hotspots to know the level of toxicity in humans. The researchers have presented the 10-year statistics of the spatial patterns of outdoor particulate matters having a diameter of 2.5 micrometres (PM 2.5) in the subcontinent for the first time based on the satellite data.

Particulate matters (PM) are materials suspended in the air in the form of minute solid particles or liquid droplets and are considered as atmospheric pollutants. They can adversely affect human health and also have impacts on climate and precipitation.

Scientists from IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, University of Illinois, US and Dalhousie University, Canada have participated in the research and done a comprehensive study with remote sensing and identified five hotspots in high-risk zone.

The five hotspots where PM2.5 increases by less than 15 microgram m3 over the 10-year period have been identified. They cover parts of the eleven states - Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Chhattigarh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh - and Bangladesh, said Dey. "The analysis showed that that 51 per cent of the subcontinent's 1.4 billion people are exposed to pollution that exceed the World Health Organisation's (WHO) highest annual air quality threshold of 35 microgram m3," he said.

 
SOURCE : http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/delhi-still-the-most-polluted-city/1/298028.html
 


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