New Delhi, October 17:

Indian cities have been receiving considerable bad press across the globe for poor air pollution standards. To combat this, the Ministry of Environment and Forests launched a new Air Pollution Index on Friday to identify the most polluted regions in the country and raise awareness about health implications.

The index, which has been developed with the help of health and environmental experts from organisations such as the Centre for Science and Environment, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Maulana Azad Medical College, and IIT Kanpur, expands the bandwidth of the existing air quality standard to monitor eight particulate matters, against the three scrutinised earlier.

The index, which will be based on existing National Air Quality Standards, will also include a public health component, defining the quality of air in real-time and what kind of health impact it could have.

The index will be coded into six categories — good, satisfactory, moderately polluted, poor, very poor and severe — and will be launched in cities with populations of over a million by mid-December.

While launching the index, Prakash Javadekar, Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change, said this is an extension of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan started by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “It won’t be business as usual,” Javadekar warned, and gave examples of action being taken on pollution levels by industries across the country, especially those situated near the Ganga.

In five years, the index will cover at least 66 cities. The next rung, cities with population of half a million, will follow after that.