New Delhi: In a move to keep a tab on the rising air pollution levels, the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board has decided to set up 10 new ambient air quality monitoring stations across five cities closer to the Delhi border.
The tenders for installation of these new real-time air pollution monitoring stations have already been issued. Two stations each will be set up in Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, Baghpat and Muzzafarnagar, according to a UPPCB official.
The official said that one pollution monitoring station have been already installed in Ghaziabad and Noida. In Noida, the monitoring system has been installed at Amity University, Sector-126, while in Ghaziabad the system has been installed in Sector-16, Vasundhara.
Two more stations are likely to be installed within six to eight months after the tenders are announced. The stations will monitor and display levels of air pollutants, including oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, apart from measuring wind velocity and temperatures. Levels of particulate matter (PM 10 and PM 2.5) suspended in the air will also be monitored by the upcoming ambient air quality monitoring stations.
The air pollution levels in these five cities could be tracked on the UPPCB’s website. Environment activists have asked the government to deploy mobile air quality monitoring vans in these cities to better understand the sources of pollution and develop mitigation strategies for each of them.
The existing air quality monitoring stations in Delhi’s suburbs are manually operated and provide limited access to data. After pollution levels in Delhi reached staggering new heights during the bygone winter, the Delhi government claimed that some of the major sources of pollution has to be reined in by the city’s neighbouring states.
