‘Burning of solid waste a major factor of air pollution in city’

KOLKATA: Indiscriminate burning of municipal solid waste has emerged as one of the major factors of air pollution in the city, according to a joint study by a team of scientists from the National Institute of Advance Studies and Utkal University.

Interestingly, municipal solid waste has been attributed to causing 16 per cent of the PM 2.5 emissions in the city followed by transport and industry which contributes 32 and 18 per cent of emissions respectively. The study was unveiled at a workshop on Air Quality in Kolkata.

The study led by Gufran Beig, Founding Project Director, System of Air Quality Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) has for the first time mapped the sources of PM (Particulate Matter) pollutants like PM 10 and PM 2.5 with a resolution of 400 metres.

PM 2.5 is considered to have a very significant health impact as it can stay in the air for days or weeks and is small enough to invade lung airways.

A total of 14 sources of anthropogenic emissions were explored in Kolkata as part of the study that included sectors like wind-blown dust, transport, industry, power plants, household, slums, street vendors, crop residue burning, cow dung, diesel generators, municipal solid waste burning, construction, incense sticks or mosquito coils and crematory.

Abhijit Chatterjee, Advisor to Kolkata Municipal Corporation pointed out construction and demolition waste as another emerging source of air pollution in the city and said that he had already recommended to the civic body for identifying hotspots for construction and demolition activities.

“Generating database, particularly for slum areas where solid fuel burning is rampant is also of much importance,“he said.

As per AQLI which is a pollution index that translates PM 2.5 into the most important metric that exists: its impact on life expectancy pointed out that Bankura followed by Burdwan are among the leading polluting areas in the state.

The workshop was organised jointly by Switch On Foundation and Asar.