: Nine days of odd-even hasn’t made much of a headway in cleaning up Delhi’s toxic air with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) data, released on Saturday, showing that the Capital continued to violate all prescribed standards of PM 2.5 and PM10 pollutants.
As per the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), which is monitoring air quality of 74 locations daily, Rajouri Garden and Lajpat Nagar registered levels of PM2.5 at 95 and 91 micrograms per cubic metre and PM10 at 252 and 281 micrograms per cubic metre, respectively. Safe limits of PM2.5 is 60 micrograms per cubic metre and PM10 is 100 micrograms per cubic metre.
Sumit Sharma, R. Suresh and Jai Malik of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), who are analysing the impact of the initiative, explained that the daily fluctuations in level of pollutants are largely due to meteorological factors like wind speed. “Wind speeds have been lower during the odd-even week in comparison to the week before. This is one of the reasons why pollutant concentrations were higher during the odd-even week with respect to the week before,” they said in a statement.
In addition only private cars come under the purview of the scheme. Contribution of private cars in PM2.5 (pollutants measuring around 2.5 microns) concentrations in Delhi is not large, hence only marginal PM 2.5 reductions are expected, especially in this season, they added.
As per an analysis by SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research), PM 2.5 rose steadily through the day from around 70 micrograms per cubic metre to 94 micrograms per cubic metre. SAFAR’s eight stations had recorded air quality mostly in the ‘poor’ category around 7 P.M. The IGI station had an air quality index of ‘very poor’
The Delhi government, however, claims that ambient air quality data shows “a declining trend in air pollution in both PM 2.and & PM 10 levels”. It added that initial trends show that the scheme will have a positive impact on air quality. The AAP government added that 55 out of the 74 monitoring locations had safe limits of PM2.5 pollution on Friday, and 21 of the locations had safe limits of PM10 pollution.
Data shows that the Capital continues to violate all prescribed standards of PM2.5 and PM10 pollutants
