Early on November 13, Bhure Lal, chairperson of Delhi’s Environment Pollution Authority, set off from his residence in Lutyen’s Delhi for his daily walk in Lodhi Gardens, his personal air pollution monitor attached. The monitor read: 1196 microgramme per cubic metres. Mr. Lal was breathing 20 times the recommended safe standard for particulate matter.
Over the last two months, eight Delhi residents tracked their air quality over 24-hour periods on portable monitors given to them by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). Each person’s reading exceeded by between three and 11 times the recommended safe exposure to PM 2.5 and PM 10 particulate matters for a 24-hour period. It also significantly exceeded the government’s official readings for that area for the same period, CSE revealed on Thursday afternoon.
Earlier this year, the World Health Organisation pegged Delhi’s average annual mean PM 2.5 level at 153 microgrammes per cubic metre compared with 56 microgrammes per cubic metre for Beijing, rating Delhi’s air quality as the worst in the world.
Air quality was worst ate in the night and early in the morning, as a result of a combination of the cool air and Delhi’s late-night truck traffic, the report’s authors Sunita Narain, Anumita Roychowdhury and Vivek Chattopadhyaya said. Senior lawyer Harish Salve, who lives in Delhi’s Vasant Vihar area was monitored on November 25-26. Between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. he recorded an hourly average of 408 microgrammes per cubic metre, or seven times the safe standard.
