Air in Indian cities unbreathable: Report

47 million children worst affected, said the Greenpeace report

GN Bureau | February 6, 2018


#Smog   #Air Pollution   #Delhi Pollution   #Greenpeace  
Representational photo by Arun Kumar
Representational photo by Arun Kumar

The air quality in Indian cities is poor and children are worst affected in states such as Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Maharashtra and Delhi, said a Greenpeace report.

Airpocalypse-II, a Greenpeace India report, analyses PM10 annual average recorded for 280 cities which have 630 million, or 53% citizens of the country’s total population. A massive part of the population, 580 million (47%) of the population are living in areas where no air quality data is available.

Out of 630 million close to 550 million people live in areas exceeding national standards for PM10, including 180 million living in areas where air pollution levels are more than twice the stipulated limit of 60g/m3which has been set by Central Pollution Control Board.

The report highlights that as many as 47 million children under the age of five years are residing in areas where PM10 levels exceeded CPCB annual limits, including 17 million children under the age of five who are in the areas where pollution levels are more than twice the limits. Children are worst affected in states such as Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Maharashtra and Delhi respectively. Together these states are home to 12.9 million children [five years and below] trapped in bad air exceeding by more than twice the annual standard. 

Sunil Dahiya, senior campaigner, Greenpeace India said:  “Only 16% of the population inhabiting the districts have real time air quality data available portrays how in-humanly we are responding to the national health crises in front of us. Even the manual data collected for 300 cities/towns across the country is not shared in a timely manner and in a format which can be accessed and understood easily by general public.”

Ranking of cities based on annual average of PM10 levels reveals- Delhi as the worst polluted city with 290 μg/m3 followed by Faridabad, Bhiwadi, Patna with annual average ranging from 272 μg/m3, 262 μg/m3 & 261 μg/m3 respectively. Surprisingly, Dehradun in Uttarakhand, once thought to be a salubrious preserve of retiring elite, also made it to the top 10 list of worst polluted cities with 238 μg/m3 annual average of PM10. The annual average of PM10 levels for the top 20 most polluted cities are between 290 μg/m3 and 195 μg/m3,for the year 2016.

Dahiya added: “Delhi remained the worst impacted city with annual PM10 levels exceeding approximately 5 times the national ambient air quality standards. The fact that less than 20% Indian cities are complying with the national, or CPCB, standards sadly points to the lack of workable, robust and timely action plans so far.”

 The report adds that most polluted cities are spread across the Indo-Gangetic basin with southern cities being slightly better off than their northern counterparts. However, cities in south also need focused and time bound action plan to bring air quality to achieve the WHO standards showing a pathway for other cities across India.

The National Clean Air Programme recently announced by the ministry of environment, forest and climate change firstly needs to be comprehensive, systematic and time bound plans with fixed accountabilities and secondly it needs to be made public soon for it to come into action, which will also help in having active participation of the general public and all layers of the government to take the idea to the ground level along with tackling myriad sources of pollution daunting the quality of air through vast parts of the country, said a Greenpeace India press note.

 

Comments

 

Other News

Green banking: an emerging way forward

Green Banking is an initiative taken by the banks to promote environment-friendly practices and reduce carbon footprint of their activities. Green financing (a part of ‘Green Banking’) is a broad term that can refer to a financial investment flowing into sustainable development projects and ini

GST revenue in May clocks 12% y-o-y growth

The gross Good & Services Tax (GST) revenue collected in the month of May, 2023 is ₹1,57,090 crore of which CGST is ₹28,411 crore, SGST is ₹35,828 crore, IGST is ₹81,363 crore (including ₹41,772 crore collected on import of goods) and cess is ₹11,489 crore (including ₹1,057 crore collecte

Need local solutions to climate change: P Velrasu of BMC

Climate change rising temperature and sea levels are posing new risks for coastal cities. With population growth rate of 1%- 2% in India every year, Mumbai too is growing and is population will double from 20 million to 40 million in the coming years. The city is also at the risk of rising sea level. It ne

Civil Services 2022 Top 20 felicitated

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology, MoS PMO, Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Space and MoS Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Dr Jitendra Singh on Tuesday interacted with and felicitated the first 20 All India Toppers of IAS/ Civil Services Exam 20

Boost to offshore wind energy projects

In a major decision, the Government has decided to grant waiver of ISTS charges to Off-Shore Wind Projects and extend the waiver to Green Hydrogen/Green Ammonia. This decision has been taken to facilitate wider execution of offshore wind energy initiatives, to promote the expansion of Green Hydrogen / Gree

Duty of stakeholders to provide cost effective, alternate energy fuels: Gadkari

Urging use of alternative and cost effective fuels to reduce pollution caused by vehicles, union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said finding cost-effective fuels is the need of the hour and underlined that use of fuels like bio-CNG and green hydrogen help in protecting the e

Visionary Talk: Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now


Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter