Gurgaon air quality comes under the radar

The Times of India , Saturday, February 28, 2015
Correspondent : Lalit Mohan
Panic buttons are being pressed in Delhi over its air quality. The report that bad air can cut an Indian's life by over three years has come as a shocker. If this is the average figure for the entire country, the situation would be far more critical in Delhi, reportedly the most polluted city in the world.

In fact, one environmentalist even speculated that President Barack Obama's three-day stay in India's capital may have abridged his time on the Earth by six hours.

Beijing was supposed to have a high level of atmospheric pollution. Today Delhi beats that too. Dirty air leads to heart and lung diseases, and shortened life spans. The most lethal killer is PM 2.5 which is fine particulate matter that creeps insidiously into the lungs and starts the damage. The nagging cough that does not go away is just the beginning.

Gurgaon should be even more worried. Basically the entire NCR falls under one atmospheric roof. The Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) releases its own monthly data on air pollution. Its website has regular figures for PM 10, but not on the finer PM 2.5 (though sources in the Board say that they will start collating this data too on a weekly basis fairly soon.)

However, a recent one-time study by the Centre for Science and Environment in Gurgaon showed that the level of the finer killer is 13 times the safe national standard. The hourly average of PM 2.5 during peak evening hours hovered around 1,000 micrograms per cubic metre (mgcm) against the safe level of 60mgcm. Other emissions, such as carbon and nitrogen compounds, are extras. A few factors aggravate the problem here.

First, there is more building activity here per square kilometre than in the capital. Delhi has more or less been built and done with. We see some sporadic construction, but nothing like the scale at which concrete structures and roads are coming up in Gurgaon. More buildings mean more excavations and more dust. It is the same for laying roads. Once work starts on any new road one has to be prepared for endless delays. Ask the people living along Golf Course Road what it is to breathe toxins floating around on the wings of dust particles for months on end. A similar situation prevails in the never-ending road work around Cyber City. No one seems to be in any hurry to finish any job.

Motorized traffic emits toxic smoke everywhere, but Gurgaon has 232 such vehicles per 1,000 persons compared to Delhi's 120. So, mark that as another factor that makes the problem more acute here."But Gurgaon does not have any thermal power plants, so the air cannot be as bad as in Delhi," are the words of comfort we get from HSPCB. Unfortunately — and that is the third aggravating factor — Gurgaon also has scores of condominiums that boast of 24-hour power backup.

We, therefore, have reason to be worried and more so because the authorities are not. Pollution control gets little or no mention in the state's plans or the netas' speeches. So far there is no regular monitoring of PM 2.5 particles, and whatever data is collected is based on readings from just one monitoring station for the entire city.

 
SOURCE : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/gurgaon/Gurgaon-air-quality-comes-under-the-radar/articleshow/46403066.cms
 


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