While the entire Delhi has been underlined “satisfactory” on the National Air Quality Index (NAQI) for its improved air quality, ITO (the busiest junction in terms of traffic) still falls under the “Unhealthy” status as recorded by the US Embassy ambient Air Quality meters.
The Delhi witnessed fresh spell of rains in the previous week. The relatively high wind speed helped to wash out Suspended Particulate Matters (SPM) from city air except ITO.
Reacting on the poor air quality at ITO junction, Traffic Expert, Seva Ram said that in a bid to reduce the traffic and direct exposure of vehicular emission, the traffic police is manually operating the traffic at the two major intersection point of ITO. “The delay traffic rate has been reduced at ITO in 2016. Tilak Marg and Ram Charan Aggarwal are the two major junction where traffic police managed the traffic with scientific approach,” said Ram.
“As per the 2016 traffic data of ITO, the passing vehicle average of vehicles is thirteen thousand per day , out of which 47 percents are cars…In 2015, we analysed the number of cars passed at peak hour which was 13000 per hour while number of pedestrian passage was 1800,” he added.
In the weekly environment database of Delhi Pollution Control Board (DPCC), Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), US embassy ambient air quality meters and SAFAR, Ministry of Earth sciences (MoES) has recorded the primary pollutant values under their prescribed limits which are 60 microcubic per gram for Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5 and 100 microcubic per gram for PM 10.
Further, the values of PMs were fluctuated between 21 microcubic per gram and 55 microcubic per gram at Mandir Marg, RK Puram, Shadipur, New Delhi, Delhi Technical University (DTU) and Punjabi Bagh area of west Delhi.
However, the ITO has different scale of pollutant levels as per the US Embassy ambient air quality meters.
The pollutant values of ITO station is oscillated between 97 microcubic per grams to 110 microcubic per gram which is relatively high.