Ghaziabad air more polluted than Delhi, Noida safer

Not only Delhi, but the entire neighbourhood seems headed for a major health crisis with air pollution levels rising alarmingly and crossing the toxic mark of the pre-CNG days, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 8, 2013, 02:09:41 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Not only Delhi, but the entire neighbourhood seems headed for a major health crisis with air pollution levels rising alarmingly and crossing the toxic mark of the pre-CNG days.

The latest Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) report has rung the alarm bell for the national capital region. It says the particulate matter (PM) level in Ghaziabad in 2010 was higher than that in Delhi and the third highest in India after Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, and West Singhbhum, Jharkhand.

In 2008, Delhi had emerged as the city with the highest PM level. The Capital, however, lost the pole position as smaller cities, including Ghaziabad, were getting polluted faster.

The PM levels almost doubled in the emergent industrial town. In 2010, the PM level in Ghaziabad was 290 micro grams per cubic meter of air (µg/cubic metre) as compared to 261 µg/cubic metre for Delhi. Increasing pollution in the Uttar Pradesh town had some effect with the National Green Tribunal imposing a ban on new industries there.

Ghaziabad’s dubious rise on the pollution chart does not mean that Capital’s particulate pollution level has fallen.

The CPCB data shows that the Capital’s particulate pollution — a cause for breathing problems and sneezing — had increased steadily since 2005 despite the Delhi government building several flyovers to reduce traffic congestion at important intersections.

Most disturbingly for environmentalists, the growth of pollutants in the Capital’s air was faster than in the 1990s, which prompted the Supreme Court to intervene, resulting in the introduction of the relatively cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) for public transport.

The particulate matter level when CNG was introduced in 2000 was 150 µg/cubic metre -- double the national standard. The level dipped to 130 µg/cubic metre by 2005 and then steadily rose to 261 µg/cubic metre in 2010. The level of another lethal toxicant, nitrogen dioxide, has also risen steadily in Delhi since 2007, the CPCB report said.

Rocketing real estate prices and crowding in the Capital have had hurtful effects on the neighbouring towns, especially Faridabad, for which the comparative data since 2004 was available. PM pollution had been rising in Delhi’s southern neighbour since 2008, reaching 164 µg/cubic metre by 2010.

Noida was still better off in the NCR. Its PM level, at 132 µg/cubic metre, was the lowest in the region but still twice the national standard (60 µg/cubic metre) for residential areas.

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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