Second most polluted city in winter was Hyd

Hyderabad, along with Kollam in Kerala, was found to be suffering from the second worst level of air pollution in South India during the winter. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi, said that after an extensive analysis of real time data from cities across the country, it found, with respect to south India that Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh had the highest levels of winter air pollution in 2020-21 .

The CSE noted that the winter coincided with the unlocking of the economy after the hard lockdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic

Visakhapatnam, the CSE said, recorded a seasonal average of 75 ug/m3 of

PM2.5 particulate matter, followed by Hyderabad and Kollam.

During 2020-21, though the the average level of

PM2.5 levels during the summer and monsoon months was considerably lower than the previous year due to the summer lockdown, the winter

PM2.5 concentration rose compared to 2019 winter in many cities.

“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,” according Anumita Roychowdhury, CSE’s executive director in charge of research and advocacy.

South India, the CSE said, saw five cities with an increasing winter air pollution trend with more than 8 per cent. Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh saw a jump of 52 per cent in the seasonal average, followed by Visakhapatnam that registered 34 per cent increase from last winter. Other cities that show significant increase were Raj am a hen dr a var am, Amaravati, and Chikkaballapur.

Among the cities that showed less than 8 per cent rise compared to 2019 winter were Bengaluru, T hi ru van ant ha pu ram, and Hyderabad, while Mysuru, Kozhikode, Chennai, and Kochi showed a decline.