E-Paper
Season’s first: Lko air officially poor as AQI touches 200 mark
Lucknow's air quality deteriorated to 'poor' on Wednesday, with an AQI of 200. PM2.5 levels spiked, reaching 500 at some monitoring stations.
The state capital air turned ‘poor’ with the Air Quality Index (AQI) touching 200 (falling in the poor category) on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Hindustan Times reported that Lucknow’s air had started deteriorating already with AQI showing a jump every single day. On Tuesday, the AQI in Lucknow was recorded at 164, but on Wednesday, it breached the moderate mark and went into the ‘poor’ category, data released by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) read.
Live stations installed in six places also recorded ‘poor’ AQI, except Kukrail, with PM 2.5 values going up to 500 points at some stations.
CPCB classifies AQI between 0-50 as “good”, between 51 and 100 as “satisfactory”, between 101 and 200 as “moderate”, between 201 and 300 as “poor”, between 301 and 400 as “very poor”, and over 400 as “severe”.
The central and state pollution control boards have set up six live monitoring stations at Talkatora, Lalbagh, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Gomti Nagar, Kukrail, and BR Ambedkar University to monitor pollution.
Data from these stations revealed that PM2.5 and PM10, two key pollutants used to calculate AQI, remained in the ‘poor’ category at all stations except Kukrail.
Talkatora recorded the highest, with an average of 236 followed by Labagh at 233, Gomti Nagar and BR Ambedkar at 211, Kendriya Vidyalaya at 200 and Kukrail at 163.
The major pollutant (PM2.5) fine particulate matter reached as high as 500 in Kendriya Vidyalaya live station, with Gomti Nagar, Lalbagh, and Talkatora recording above 300-mark PM2.5 values and Kukaril with 259 despite being the green zone.
