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Gandhinagar, Guwahati and Mumbai were among the top ten most polluted cities in Asia on Monday.
According to the latest data available on the World Air Quality Index (https://aqicn.org), pollution levels touched hazardous levels in GIFT City, Gandhinagar with an air quality index (AQI) of 724, the highest in the list at the time of filing of this report. Gandhinagar was followed by Pan Bazaar, Guwahati (665), Khindipada-Bhandup West, Mumbai (471) and Bhopal Chauraha, Dewas (315).
In the list, five cities were from China and one from Mongolia.
The AQI between 0 and 50 is considered ‘good’, 51-100 ‘Moderate, 101-150 Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, 151-200 ‘Unhealthy, 201-300 ‘Very Unhealthy’ and 300+ ‘Hazardous’ as per the Air Quality Index scale defined by the US-EPA 2016 standard.
Started in 2007, the World Air Quality Index project aims to promote air pollution awareness for citizens and provide unified and worldwide air quality information.
Meanwhile, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), its latest analysis of air pollution levels, claimed this winter saw the cleanest air in the Delhi-NCR region since large-scale monitoring started in 2018.
The concentration of air pollutants in Delhi stood at 160 micrograms per cubic meter for the October-January period, which is the lowest level recorded since wide-scale monitoring started in 2018-19, the leading think tank said in its report.
“The PM2.5 level, computed by averaging monitoring data from 36 Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS) stations located in the city was 17 per cent lower compared to the seasonal average of 2018-19 winter. Based on the subset of the 10 oldest stations, there is an improvement of almost 20 per
cent,” the CSE report said.
It also said that the number of days with severe or severe-plus air quality was the lowest in the last five years.
“This winter, around 10 days had a city-wide average in ‘severe’ or worse Acategory, which is much lower compared to 24 such days in the previous winter and 33 in the 2018-19 winter,” the report said.
(With PTI inputs)
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