Delhi ranks among 230 most-polluted cities in Asia

Delhi's air is among the most polluted in 230 Asian cities, a new survey has found.

Updated on: Nov 11, 2010, 24:08:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Delhi's air is among the most polluted in 230 Asian cities, a new survey has found.

An analysis of air quality by Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities has found that particulate matter (PM) of Delhi in 2008 had ranged between 201 and 250 micro grams in a cubic meter of air (ug/m3), more than double the national standard for PM 10.

High particulate matter causes breathing problems and can stir asthma attacks. The PM level in Delhi is on rise since 2006 after witnessing a fall for almost five years after introduction of Compressed Natural Gas for public transport in the Capital.

Anumita Roy Chowdhury, associate director of Centre for Science and Environment, said the rising levels of particulate matter were an area of concern.

"Despite Metro trains, the phenomenal increase in number of vehicles in Delhi leading to congestion is a reason for air quality turning bad," she said. The survey found that while air quality in most Asian cities had improved by imposing restrictions on use of personal transport and providing better public transport, the same has not happened in major Indian cities.

Besides Delhi, other northern Indian cities such as Kanpur, Lucknow and Ludhiana were categorised as bad on the air pollution scoreboard, developed by Asian Development Bank.

Five cities that got the top ranking were Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta, Jinan and Manila. The other three cities — Colombo, Hangzhou, and Kathmandu —scored "moderate".

While none of the surveyed cities received a "minimal" score, neither did any of them score "excellent", showing there is ample room for improvement, the survey released at a conference in Singapore said.

"Rather than ranking cities based on air pollution alone, it is important to look at existing capacity, policies and measures as these are better indicators for their future levels of air pollution," said Sophie Punte, Executive Director of the CAI-Asia Centre.

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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