Air pollution forecast in the offing

You will soon find out how much the air outside your homes in residential colonies, such as Janakpuri, Greater Kailash or Rohini, will impact your health.

Updated on: Jun 3, 2011, 23:44:33 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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You will soon find out how much the air outside your homes in residential colonies, such as Janakpuri, Greater Kailash or Rohini, will impact your health.

In a first for any Indian city, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), along with the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), will start air pollution forecast for Delhi in the next few months.

“On the basis of the forecast, a health advisory will also be issued for citizens and the local authorities,” a senior environment ministry official, who is coordinating the project, said. The forecast and advisory would be based on a comprehensive air pollution index.

For instance, if the air quality predicted for a particular place is 300% higher than the national standard, a health advisory for critical levels of air pollution would be issued. In case it is 200%, the advisory would be for high levels.

Delhi’s average air pollution levels are 70-90% higher than the national standard but in winter it goes up by 300%.

While the decision on issuing a health advisory has been taken, its nature is yet to be decided. The CPCB says there is not enough scientific evidence in India to relate any health disorder to a particular level of air pollution and, therefore, the advisory should be general.

The Centre for Science and Environment, which is pushing for a precise health advisory, says the WHO had enough data to link health problems with air pollution. “Such health advisories are issued in all cities of Europe and the US. Even China has started the practice,” said Anumita Roy Chowdhury, associate director of the CSE.

Initially, the project was to be launched before the Commonwealth Games, but was delayed due to a turf war between the CPCB and IITM. Now, most of the issues have been resolved and the government expects to start the forecast once the nature of the health advisory to be issued is decided.

The CPCB has already imported automated pollution measurement equipment from France for daily forecasts. It has set up a station in Rajasthan to study the impact of westerly winds on the Capital’s air quality. The air pollution data of the last 10 years from different monitoring stations in Delhi will be synchronised with weather data to predict the air quality levels.

“Using the data, authorities can regulate traffic in an area, which is a potential source of high air pollution,” a ministry official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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