Brooms fuelling pollution

The age-old practice of sweeping roads with brooms significantly adds to morning haze in the Capital, reducing visibility that motorists struggle with almost everyday during winters, says a new study on air pollution, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 24, 2007, 02:59:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The age-old practice of sweeping roads with brooms significantly adds to morning haze in the Capital, reducing visibility that motorists struggle with almost everyday during winters, says a new study on air pollution.

Close to one lakh Municipal Corporation of Delhi workers sweep the streets of the Capital in the morning hours, contributing 25 per cent to the respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) in the air during that time, said Professor Arun Attri at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of Environmental Sciences.

The presence of RSPM in excess of 50g in one cubic metre of air increases the risk of cardiopulmonary diseases, stressed respiratory physiology, mortality and morbidity.

This winter, its level has hovered up to three times the 50g mark in Delhi’s air.

The study turns on its head the long-held belief that the main sources for morning smog were vehicle emission and industrial pollution.

The study, to be published in the next issue of global journal Atmospheric Environment, found a sudden jump in RSPM levels in the Capital’s air at the time when the roads are manually cleaned in the morning.

In cold winter mornings, the fine pollution particles remain suspended in the air we breathe for a longer time, causing low visibility and fuelling asthma attacks. “It is only when the sun filters through the thick morning smog and it becomes little warmer that the RSPM level goes down,” Attri 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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