Air quality improves marginally as wind speed picks up in in Ghaziabad, Noida

Ghaziabad:

Ghaziabad:

HT Image

An improvement in wind speed helped to better the air quality in Ghaziabad, Noida and Greater Noida to “poor” on Friday from “very poor” a day earlier.

The air quality index (AQI), as per the central pollution control board, for the day stood at 266, 274 and 247 for Ghaziabad, Greater Noida and Noida, respectively.

“The AQI levels have come down due to increase in wind speed to about 10kmph as against 6-7kmph during past couple of days. This has led to faster dispersal of pollutants. On the other hand, the wind direction which is presently north-westerly is also likely to change to north-easterly with winds coming in from Uttarakhand and Meerut side from October 17-18,” said Kuldeep Srivastava, head of Indian Meteorological Department’s Regional Weather Forecasting Centre, New Delhi. “This will also reduce the impact of any pollution coming in from Punjab and Haryana with respect to stubble burning which is generally brought by north-westerly winds. Further, there is no indication of any rainfall activity in coming days.”

An AQI between zero and 50 is considered “good”, 51 and 100 “satisfactory”, 101 and 200 “moderate”, 201 and 300 “poor”, 301 and 400 “very poor”, and 401 and 500 “severe.”

The System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (Safar) also said in a forecast on Friday that the marginal improvement in surface wind speed has led to improved ventilation and AQI. “Low surface winds are expected today (October 16) and AQI likely to stay in higher-end poor to the lower end of very poor for tomorrow. Marginal improvement in surface winds is expected by 17th October and poor AQI is forecasted. Air quality is forecasted to further improve to lower end of poor category by 18th October,” its statement read.

As per CPCB’s records, all the four monitoring stations in Ghaziabad, one in Greater Noida and all four in Noida stood under ‘poor’ category. One monitoring station of Knowledge Park V in Greater Noida however recorded AQI at 301 under ‘very poor’ category at 4pm as per CPCB records.

The officials of the UP-pollution control board (UPPCB) said that they are continuing with regular monitoring as well as enforcement drives in order to check rising pollution levels.

“Our drive has been more intensive in areas of Loni which has presence of illegal factories and resulting in high levels of air pollution at local level. On Friday, we demolished 42 such factories at Amit Vihar in Loni which were primarily indulged in using furnace and resulting air pollution,” said Utsav Sharma, regional officer of the UPPCB.

He added that three teams of UPPCB have been formed to keep a tab on running of DG-sets as well as other violations.

“The teams are ensuring that operation of DG-sets is restricted as per the directions given by the Environment (Pollution and Control) Authority besides the teams are also ensuring that other violations like burning of garbage, industrial emissions etc are also brought to notice and curbed,” he added.