Delhi’s air worst in 8 months; 10 of 35 monitoring stations record ‘severe’ AQI reading

Ten of 35 monitoring stations across the national Capital, recorded the air quality slipping into the ‘severe’ category on Friday, as Delhi’s overall pollution levels continued to stray further into the ‘very poor’ category.

Officials at the monitoring stations said this was the worst air quality recorded in the city in the last eight months.

At 11am, Delhi’s hourly average air quality index (AQI) reading was 374, in the ‘very poor’ zone.

While the overall AQI raced towards the ‘severe’ category, in 10 of the 35 monitoring stations the pollution levels had already crossed the 400-mark. Nine of these stations are located pollution hotspots, which have been identified by the government for the employment of intensive pollution control measures.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) data showed that on Friday, air in Alipur, Shadipur, Patparganj, Vivek Vihar, Anand Vihar, Jahangirpuri, Rohini, Wazirpur, Bawana and Mundka was in the ‘severe’ zone.

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At 7am, the AQI reading was 360, in the higher end of the ‘very poor’ zone. This is the second time that air quality touched ‘very poor’ in Delhi this season (post-monsoon). On October 15, the air quality had turned ‘very poor’ for the first time with an AQI reading of 312.

The overall AQI reading was 296 on Thursday. Government agencies had forecast that the air quality will deteriorate on October 23-24 on account of calm wind conditions which would not allow the dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere.

Measures to deal with ‘very poor’ air quality under the winter phase of the Graded Response Action Plan (Grap)—a round the year plan to combat air pollution in Delhi-NCR—such as stopping the use of diesel generator (DG) sets had already kicked in from October 15.

Scientists at the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said that calm wind conditions mean the wind speed is zero and hence there is no dispersion of pollutants.

“This is a usual phenomenon for October-November, which is when air quality deteriorates. Some improvement is likely around October 26 when wind speed may pick up,” said a senior IMD scientist.

Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai had yesterday blamed stubble-burning in neighbouring Haryana and Punjab as the major reason behind the plunge in air quality in Delhi.

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