Noida’s air quality improves, though still in very poor category

Meteorological conditions a day earlier helped improve the air of Noida and Ghaziabad on Wednesday, but Greater Noida’s dipped.

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Noida breathed the cleanest air since the past week for a while but as the wind speed dropped, the quality dropped again. According to the weather analysts, it’s only between October 30 and November 1 that the wind speed will rise again thereby improving the air quality.

“The wind speed on Wednesday was low and around 6 to 8 kilometre per hour (kmph), however on Tuesday it was moderate at a speed of 18 to 20 kmph that had its effect today as well. This is the major reason that the air quality improved on Wednesday as well because the pollutants were dispersed. However, as the wind speed is set to drop, the pollutants may aggregate again,” said Kuldeep Srivastava, head, regional weather forecasting centre, India Meteorological Department (IMD).

According to the data from Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB), the air quality index (AQI) of Noida, on a scale of 0 to 500, was 301 against 320 a day earlier and 376 before that.

The AQI for Greater Noida also saw improvement from 332 a day earlier to 324 on Wednesday. The AQI of Ghaziabad however dropped from 306 a day earlier to 317 on Wednesday.

“The improvement is remarkable however it’s due to the meteorological conditions a day earlier. The wind speed helped with the dispersion of pollutant both PM2.5 and PM10,” said Shambhavi Shukla, program officer, air pollution, centre for science and environment (CSE).

The average PM2.5 of Noida dropped from 166.88 microgrammes per cubic metres on Tuesday to 148.64 units. The PM10 concentration of Noida also dropped from 314.30 units on Tuesday to 327.38 units a day earlier. The PM2.5 of Greater Noida saw improvement from 172.51 units day earlier to 160.23 units on Wednesday, while the PM10 values dropped from 364.665 units to 353.37 units on Wednesday.

The standard limit for PM2.5 is 40 units while that of PM10 is 60 units respectively.

Meanwhile, the officials of UPPCB said that they are actively monitoring the instance of violations and imposing penalty.

“In past three days we have recommended environment compensation worth Rs. 5 lakh each on two builders holding construction work at sector 76 and sector 150. There were violations including uncovered building material. Another compensation was imposed on a contractor doing underpass work at sector 152 for not taking appropriate dust control measures,” said Praveen Kumar, regional officer, UPPCB, Noida.