Residents of Mumbai have been shocked by weather conditions over the past two days. The skies resemble those of Delhi or Beijing at their worst. The already smog-filled air — a ‘normal and depressing winter hazard — has been exacerbated by a major fire in the Deonar garbage dumping grounds.
Despite several swathes of the city being blanketed with smog, experts say there has been no significant change in the city’s air quality data. In Chembur, close to the dumping ground, pollution levels have gone from ‘moderately polluted’ to ‘poor’, according to the data compiled by Dr Gufran Beig, Scientist and Project Director at System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR), Pune. SAFAR is an initiative of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (Ministry of Earth Sciences). Large parts of the city remained ‘moderately polluted’ for the last week. These patterns are fairly consistent with the drop in air quality over the winter months.
Mr Beig told The Hindu , “Open bio-fuel burning will [increase the presence of] the coarser particles like PM10 rather than PM2.5. Areas like Chembur and Mazagaon are giving high values and are probably affected by the dumping ground fire, which reduces visibility and increases the smog.” (PM is particulate matter, and the numbers refer to the diameter of the particles in micrometres.)
According to India Meteorological Department (IMD) officials in Mumbai, current smog conditions have been caused as much by the fire, which has sent smoke fanning out over various parts of the city, as they have been by high levels of particulate matter in the air and a fall in minimum temperatures across the city. Mumbai, it has to be remembered, has an annual tryst with haze-like conditions during the months immediately following the monsoon.
Researcher and World Bank consultant Archana Patankar points out that the recent phenomenon was the result of a dip in temperatures in the last few days. She said, “The constituent of the smog around the dumping area will have suspended particles and carbon. Dumping grounds emit methane. But the smog is not because of the burning alone; it is combined with vehicular pollution and low winter temperatures. The only alarming factor is in terms of its health impact on people with respiratory illnesses.”
According to Dr Rakesh Kumar, Scientist and Head, Mumbai Zonal Lab, National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), smog due to fires at dumping grounds used to be a regular phenomenon in Mumbai earlier but its frequency has reduced over the last few years. The problem, he points out, is that smoke from the dumping ground is likely to be toxic given that it is a combination of many pollutants. Mr Kumar said while he was on a flight coming into Mumbai airport, he spotted four to five locations where the fire was burning intensely. “It is not easy to access these areas,” he says. “This is a challenge in any dumping ground. You cannot take the fire brigade there as the land is very unstable; it can cave in.” In the future, he said, the civic corporation will have to design passages into the dumping ground. “There is a waste treatment plant in the vicinity, whose water could be used to douse the fires, but it will take some time before we create such infrastructure.”
