A WHO survey of more than 1,600 cities ranked Delhi as the most polluted. Post Diwali, with a pollution count of 999 on a scale that ends at 500, the Capital turned the deadliest in the world. Collective apathy, both at the people and Government levels, has brought Delhi to such a pass, experts tell Shalini Saksena
Delhi is the most polluted city on Earth says the World Health Organization (WHO). WhyIJ Measurements taken at the US Embassy in Delhi on November 7, 2016 put the city’s Air Quality Index at 999, off the standard chart, which finishes at the hazardous level of 500 making the Capital the most polluted city on Earth. By comparison, the highest AQI level recorded in Baoding — China’s most polluted city — was 298. Beijing was 30, while India’s next most polluted city, coal and industry-heavy Chandrapur, recorded levels of 824, according to the World Air Quality Index. .
This is not all. According to data released by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee levels of Suspended Particulate Matter PM2.5 increased by 62.7 per cent on November 2, 2016, as compared to that on Diwali. On November 4, 2016, System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research, a unit of Ministry of Earth Sciences, said that the average concentration of PM 10 was 566 µgm3 while PM 2.5 was 449 µgm3. The normal PM 10 is 100, while the safe limit for PM 2.5 is 60.
According to the latest report of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the national Capital witnessed the worst spell of smog in 17 years. As per the CSE report, the post-Diwali pollution peak was higher than what was on Diwali day.
For those who don’t know what smog is, Dr Prashant Saxena, head, Pulmonology & Sleep Medicine with Max Smart Superspeciality Hospital in Saket, tells you that the term is derived from merging of two words — smoke and fog. “It consists of a mixture of air pollutants like fine particles, toxic gases, water vapour and ground level ozone. The main sources of these are pollutants released directly into the air by diesel-run vehicles, industrial gases and heating /burning due to human activities,” he explains.
The smog, he tells you, is made up of a combination of air pollutants that can compromise human health, harm the environment and even cause property damage.
“Smog can cause or aggravate health problems such as asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and other respiratory problems as well as eye irritation and reduced resistance to colds and lung infections. The ozone in smog inhibits plant growth and can cause widespread damage to crops and forests,” Saxena adds.
According to Dr Rekha Singh, an environmentalist, smog is not a natural phenomenon. The word was introduced in the early 20th Century after industrialisation kicked off. “Modern smog is an air pollution which is a combination of fog with other air pollutants. In general terms, when temperature lowers, pollutants present fail to get dispersed and get trapped in lower atmosphere,” Singh explains.
Air quality is monitored at different places in Delhi. The mean wind speed recorded at East Arjun Nagar on Diwali day this year was 1.3 m/s whereas last year it was 3.4 m/s. This year, the mean mixing height (the average height of pollution from ground level upwards) on Diwali day was 492 metres as compared to 590 metres in 2015. The mixing height on night of Diwali was 152 metres, last year’s figure stood at 324. lower wind speed and mixing height causes lower dispersive capacity in the atmosphere, leading to higher concentration of pollutants.
“The level of pollutants has increased significantly in all places irrespective of parameters attributed to unfavourable meteorological conditions during the period. lower mixing height attributes to lesser vertical distribution of pollutants. lower temperature coupled with lesser wind speed attributes to stagnation of pollutants. This is due to cooling of the Earth’s surface. The air closer to the ground tends to cool down more if the wind speed is also low along with lower mixing height making less area for dispersion. The pollutants remain suspended to the ground for longer duration till governing factors change its characteristics,” Dr Singh tells you.
Experts like Vivek Adhia from the World Resources Institute opine that the geo-locational aspects of Delhi are very important and influence the air quality in a big way. Increased activities in nearby States, like heavy construction in Gurgaon and other parts of Haryana, Noida etc, farm fires/open burning of agri-residues in Punjab, add to the choke.
“While earlier, the scale of all of these activities was not significant for the problems to go over the roof, there has been an exponential increase in the collective factors adversely affecting the air quality over the last decade. What is missing is a scientific assessment of externalities and geo-locational impacts to look at air currents and its pathways that mostly segregate PM and other pollutants within the Delhi-NCR,” Adhia says.
The scale of adverse factors like burning of waste, increased construction activity, increased private rather than public transportation and people travelling greater distances daily has increased exponentially. Now that Delhi virtually stopped breathing for a week, initiatives are being considered and implemented both at the Central and the local levels.
“But most of them are not being looked at holistically and being implemented merely at the time of acute air problems rather than tackling the source of the issue. It is important to articulate and set an overall air quality agenda for the country and various regions need to collectively act on it. Various organisations are looking at a larger picture by mapping out the current monitoring approaches, geo-locational flow patterns, a combination of curbing instruments like industry and vehicle standards,” Adhia says.
Three major factors choke Delhi. First is the aerosol formation. A 2012 IIT, Delhi, study on aerosol formation stated that the entire Indo-Gangetic belt is prone to high levels of oxides of nitrogen and sulphur which increase levels of Particulate Matter in the air. The Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) is considered the most populated and highly polluted in India. During winters, the winds from the North-east and the West converge at IGP and reduce wind speeds, causing stagnation in wind movement which, in turn, make pollution dispersal difficult.
Second is the coal menace. Eastern Uttar Pradesh has close to seven coal-fired thermal power plants. Studies by Urban Emissions, an organisation that deals with analysis of air pollution has identified that the changing wind patterns in the IGP, especially during the winters, tend to carry the emissions from the power plants to several hundreds of km depending on the speed of the wind. Delhi, though located at a distance, continues to be influenced by the long-range transportation of pollutants from coal.
Third, Uttar Pradesh is home to more than 200 million people. Apart from its historical importance, the State is also known for its highly-concentrated industrial landscape. Key industrial hotspots start with Ghaziabad bordering Delhi and stretch up to the district of Sonbadhra bordering Madhya Pradesh which produces close to 10 per cent of India’s coal-fired electricity.
Then there are other winter-specific activities like burning of crop stubble in Punjab and Haryana upstream of Delhi, and burning of fire crackers on Diwali. All these add to the deadly cocktail alongside the very unique meteorological conditions that do not allow dispersal of air as winter sets in. A combination of all these, makes for a ticking dynamite-like situation in Delhi and other cities located in the northern belt.
Short-term and quick fix solutions will not address the problem, a viewpoint shared by Arun Krishnamurthy of the Environmentalist Foundation of India.
“Solutions the Government took last week, like closing down schools, stopping construction, putting smoke metres at all borders and watering roads that are 100 feet wide, are short-term measures. These act like painkillers for a larger disease that has been diagnosed. Painkillers can only ease the pain for a few days. We need action that will be more permanent,” Krishna-murthy says.
He also tells you that the smog is here to stay even if drastic steps are taken. And it is not just going to be a winter phenomenon. “When was the last time one saw a clear sky in Delhi in summersIJ There is always a haze. We are all aware of the reasons for the problem that we saw peaking last week. It is not just about crackers on Diwali. It is an amalgamation of several things like the farmers burning the crops in Punjab and Haryana to vehicular pollution and our increased dependency on the use of diesel. Everyone is asking the Government to take action but what about us as responsible citizensIJ Are we a part for environment conservation. Why is it that the farmers are not being tackledIJ They continue to do what they want to with impunity because they are part of the vote bank. But they too are being affected. No immunity should be given to anyone, whether farmers, fishermen or even corporates or people belonging to any caste, creed and religion. We should all be responsible for the environment since our actions impact it,” Krishnamurthy says.
The reason why farmers are resorting to burning their crop is because they don’t have an alternative technology that can be used. So they have no option but to resort to burning in open fields.
Also the Government can’t just keep waking up during emergencies. There is need for a pro-active, long-term vision. Even after the Chennai floods, everyone questioned the Government. The same is true for the Delhi smog. We know it was a disaster waiting to happen. We can blame it on the weather system and climatic change. But nothing has been done to control population or pollution. We are caught in a spat between State and Central Governments. This is not the time to fight but to have a specific mandate and a stringent action-plan,” Krishnamurthy says.
Environmentalists point out that the quantum of things done in the past and today are at different levels. Our past actions have come to haunt us. There is garbage on the road, plastic is still being used, drains are choked leading to waterlogging and ground water pollution. like Sati, it is a bad practice that needs to be abolished. So why not do away with practices that damage the environmentIJ
Ben James, CEO of Global Road Technology, has a solution. “It is all about dust management,” he tells you. Whenever there is construction or in regions of mining or areas where the vehicular traffic is heavy, dust is bound to fly. Using water to settle the dust is a temporary measure since it will either seep into the ground or evaporate, leaving the dust to fly again. The solution is to put certain kind of polymers in the water,” he explains.
This will result in two things. First, the polymer solution acts as a coating on the surface it is sprayed on. This stays for at least three to six months. Second, it will reduce the usage of water and the diesel emitted by these water trucks, both of which are resources that need to be conserved.
“Water trucks are seen all the time on construction sites and in mining areas. They spray water many times over. But if a polymer solution is used, it will take care of the dust for a few months. The cost too is affordable — Rs 3 per sq foot, depending on where it has to be sprayed. There is need for an environment friendly solution. The polymer is non-toxic for all living beings and the environment,” James asserts.
What happened in Delhi is even more devastating since we are the Capital of the world’s second largest populous country in the world. It is time to pin responsibility on individuals. We need to shake the Government into doing things which have not been done so far.
Seconds Ravi Agarwal, founder-director of Toxic links. “There are a lot of things that individuals can’t do. They can’t force a construction site to stop work. They can’t prevent people from burning garbage on the roads. The Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) can be pro-active here. They can take action. They can call the police or inform the area municipals. It is in such situations that the Government needs to step-in,” Agarwal tells you.
Delhi is already breathing poison. Even if this peak had not happened (AQI of 999), PM 10 is still five to six times the safe zone of 100.
“The Delhi-NCR has become much more populated and polluted over time. We see constant construction happening in the NCR. Though not all the trucks enter Delhi, there is so much urbanisation around the city. So the present situation is dismal, given the PM 10, 600 µgm3 has become the average,” Agarwal says.
The problem is not that we don’t know the sources, the problem is that once the air quality improves, people tend to forget and treat the bad situation as normal. What was witnessed last week in Delhi was hard to accept since it is just not possible to breathe in such conditions. Public muteness on dirty water, garbage on the roads and bad air quality fuels inaction.
“People have to realise that poor quality of air is going to affect each one of us and, hence, he have to shake the institutions to take action. We have to tell the monitoring agencies that, this time, we will not take this lying down. Though directives have been issued, we still continue to see leaves burning and trucks entering Delhi. The more we come out and question, the less we will tolerate and the more likely we are to have cleaner air,” Agarwal says.
· The elderly, children and individuals suffering from respiratory problems vulnerable.
· We must indulge in activities which decrease air pollution.
· Car pooling, avoid diesel cars, use public transport, avoid burning waste/garbage, follow industrial regulations, don’t exercise early mornings and late evenings and drink plenty of fluids are some such measures.
· Asthma patients: Follow medical advice, keep emergency medications, avoid strenuous exercises and cold/dust exposure.
· Exposure to highly toxic air can cause cardiac arrest & lung cancer.
· Pollutants can affect the foetus
· Use mask like N-95 or N-99.
Action Plan
The study submitted by IIT, Kanpur, recommends the following control options for improving the air quality, to be implemented in a progressive manner:
· Stop use of coal in hotels/restaurants
· lPG to all
· Stop MSW burning: Improve collection and disposal (landfill and waste to energy plants)
· Construction and demolition: Vertically cover the construction area with fine screens, handling and storage of raw material (completely cover the material), water spray and wind breaker and store the waste inside premises with proper cover.
· On-road movement of construction material should be fully covered.
· Concrete batching: Water spray, wind breaker, bag filter at silos, enclosures, hoods, curtains, telescopic chutes, cover transfer points and conveyer belts
· Road dust: Vacuum sweeping of major roads (four times a month), carpeting of shoulders, mechanical sweeping with water wash.
· Soil dust: Plant small shrubs, perennial forages, grass covers
· Vehicles: Retro fitment of diesel particulate filter
Implementation of BS-VI for all diesel vehicles, including heavy duty vehicles (non-CNG buses and trucks) and lCVs (non-CNG)
· Inspection/maintenance of vehicles
Ultra low Sulphur Fuel (<10 PPM) ); BS-VI compliant
· 2-Ws with Multi Point Fuel Injection (MPFI) system or equivalent
· Electric/hybrid vehicles: 2% of two wheelers, 10% of three wheelers and 2% four wheelers
· New residential and commercial buildings to have charging facilities.
· Industry and diesel generator sets: Reduce sulphur content in industrial fuel to less than 500 PPM.
· Minimise use, uninterrupted power supply, banning 2 kilovolt-ampere or smaller generator sets.
· De-SOx-ing (sulphur oxide) at power plants within 300 km radius of Delhi.
· De-NOx-ing (nitrogen oxide) at power plants within 300 km radius of Delhi.
· Controlling evaporative loss during fuel unloading and re-fuelling through vapour recovery systems at petrol pumps.
· Managing crop residue burning in Haryana, Punjab.
Potential alternatives: Energy production, biogas generation, commercial feedstock for cattle, composting, conversion in plant charcoal, raw material for industry.
· nWind breaker, water spraying, plantation, reclamation.