8 of top 10 most polluted cities of India in UP; Gzb, Bulandshahr at top: CSE report
The most air polluted cities in India during this winter were located in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi-NCR, according to a Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) report.
As per the report, the most polluted cluster was the Delhi-NCR with Ghaziabad Bulandshahr, Greater Noida, Noida, and Delhi leading the pack. Eight of the top 10 most polluted cities were in UP with Ghaziabad and Bulandshahr taking the top spots; while Delhi was at number five and Bhiwadi in Rajasthan at number 10. Chandigarh is the only major city to be put among the five least polluted ones.
Kanpur was at sixth and Lucknow at ninth spot, while Bhiwani and Palwal in Haryana and Alwar in Rajasthan were the least polluted cities.
The CSE carried out an analysis of real time data on the difference between 2020-21 winter and the previous winters.
CSE’s executive director in charge of research and advocacy Anumita Roychowdhury said, “Winter is a special challenge when inversion, and cool and calm weather traps and spikes daily pollution. While the northern Indo Gangetic Plain is most affected, other regions also experience a rise, but with lesser intensity.
“But this year even though the average level of PM2.5 during summer and monsoon months was considerably lower than the previous year due to the summer lockdown. PM2.5 concentration in winter has risen compared to 2019 winter in many cities across regions. This bouncing back of pollution post-lockdown unmasks the high impacts of local and regional pollution. This demands quicker regional reforms to curb pollution from vehicles, industry, power plants and waste burning to curb the winter pollution and also sustain annual improvement at a regional scale with speed.”
“This analysis has considered 99 cities where data availability for two consecutive winters meets the minimum criteria of 75 per cent of data completeness requirement. This analysis has helped to understand the regional differences in regional profile of winter pollution. Even though there is considerable regional variation, peak pollution episodes increased and synchronised within the regions during winter. At the same time, uneven rise across monitoring locations and contiguous cities bring out the impact of local pollution,” says Avikal Somvanshi, programme manager in CSE’s Urban Lab team of the Sustainable Cities programme.
The analysis is part of the air pollution tracker initiative of CSE. It is based on publicly available granular real time data (15-minute averages) from the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) official online portal Central Control Room for Air Quality Management. The data is captured from 248 official stations under the Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring System (CAAQMS) spread across 115 cities in 22 states and union territories. CAAQMS has many more cities in its network than included in the analysis.
