Haryana cities continue to reel under toxic air
The air quality of almost all Haryana cities, especially those located in the National Capital Region, deteriorated on the Diwali night despite a ban on the sale of firecrackers in 14 districts
Residents of most of the cities in Haryana continue to breathe polluted air with the quality remaining ‘severe’ to ‘very poor’ for the third consecutive day.
As per a bulletin of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the air quality of almost all Haryana cities, especially those located in the National Capital Region (NCR), deteriorated on the Diwali night despite a ban on the sale of firecrackers in 14 districts.
As per the bulletin on Sunday afternoon, six Haryana cities, including Jind (463), Panipat (440), Hisar (428), Ballabgarh (426) and Gurugram (419), reported the air quality index (AQI) over 400 which is categorised as ‘severe’ by CPCB, while the air quality of 11 cities, including Ambala, Bahadurgarh, Bhiwani, Charkhi Dadri, Faridabad, Fatehabad, Kaithal, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Sonepat and Manesar, was in the ‘very poor’ bracket with their AQI measuring between 300 and 400.
With AQI value of 144, Panchkula is the only city to have ‘moderate air quality’, while residents of Palwal and Narnaul cities breathed ‘poor’ quality air with the AQI of 278 and 203, respectively.
The ‘severe’ AQI affects even the healthy people and adversely impacts those with existing health conditions, ‘very poor’ air quality causes respiratory illness on prolonged exposure and ‘poor’ air quality causes breathing discomfort among most of the people on prolonged exposure, the CPCB said.
With the incidents of stubble burning rising with each passing day, officials of the Haryana State Pollution Control Board predicted the air to remain polluted for the next couple of days.
As per the officials, Haryana has so far reported 4,215 incidents of farm fires since September 15, 778 of which were detected in the past three days.
The figures revealed that with 1,006 incidents of farm fires, Kaithal district is on the top, followed by 821 in Karnal, 735 in Fatehabad, 514 in Kurukshetra, 375 in Jind and 140 in Yamunanagar.