With days to go before Diwali, when pollution levels usually peak due to firecracker use, the air quality across the city was very poor on Thursday. And the forecast for the next few days did not look good.
Concentration levels of harmful particulate matter were on average three times the standards. According to the SAFAR index of the Ministry of Earth Science, the average level of PM2.5 was 211 micrograms per cubic metre, while the level of PM10 was 369.9 - both categorised as “very poor”. On Friday and Saturday, the day before Diwali, levels of PM2.5 and PM10 were forecast to remain between very poor and severe - the highest warning level.
The levels of particulate matter shot up immensely during the day on Thursday, before dropping again in the evening. The level of PM10 at Anand Vihar, according to the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, was a whopping 962 micrograms per cubic metre at 2.30 p.m. or nine times the safe limit. While these pollution levels are dangerous, they are not unusual for this time of the year. With temperatures falling, the pollution levels spike going into the winter season.
“This was expected and it’s only going to get worse. We have already saturated our air with pollution. But, what is the government doing about the episodic winter pollution,” asked Anumita Roychowdhury, the head of the Centre for Science and Environment’s air pollution and clean transportation programme.
She said that last year the Delhi Government, which came to power in February 2015, may not have had the “lead time” to come up with a targeted anti-pollution plan for the winter. “This year they had the time to come up with a targeted plan. But, we haven’t heard from the government on how they plan to stop the peaking of pollution in winter. We can’t afford to miss the opportunity to do something,” she said.
