F’bad pollution sees 3-fold rise from Sept to Oct

GURUGRAM: On Friday, air quality in Faridabad was recorded in the ‘severe’ category, touching the year’s highest reading of 479 (‘severe’) on the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) air quality index (AQI) bulletin. An analysis of official AQI data shows that air quality in Haryana’s oldest municipality has shot up more than threefold since September.

Faridabad’s average daily AQI for September, calculated using CPCB data, comes to 65, indicating ‘satisfactory’ air quality. In October, however, the city’s average daily AQI rose to 239, indicating ‘poor’ air quality.

Moreover, while Faridabad experienced 11 ‘good’ air days, seven ‘satisfactory’ air days and four ‘moderate’ air days in September, the number of ‘good’ and ‘satisfactory’ air days dropped to just one each in October. Meanwhile, Faridabad saw 14 ‘poor’ air days, three ‘very poor’ air days, and one day of ‘severe’ air in October.

Niranjan Raje, a Gurugram resident and former member of the Supreme Court-appointed Environmental Pollution Control Authority (Epca), said, “There are no readily available source apportionment studies or emission inventories that have been made for Faridabad, so it’s a bit hard to make pointed observations about the nature of air pollution there.”

However, he added, “The main causes of concern in Faridabad would be vehicular emissions from NH-19 and the Gurugram-faridabad highway. In addition, there are clusters of industries around the periphery of the city that use coal and husk as fuel. These are similar to ones in Manesar and Udyog Vihar in Gurugram,” Raje said.

However, according to the air quality life index (AQLI), released in November last year by the Energy Policy Institute at University of Chicago (EPIC), exposure to PM2.5 has reduced life expectancy in Faridabad by more than 10 years.

The AQLI also found that the average annual level of PM2.5 in the city rose from 68.8ug/m3 in 1998 to 113.9ug/m3 in 2016, an increase of 45ug/m3 in 16 years, at a rate of 2ug/m3 annually.

By contrast, in Gurugram, life expectancy due to PM2.5 exposure was found to have reduced by 8.7 years, whereas the annual average PM2.5 concentration rose by 41ug/m3 between 1998 and 2016.

“This can be used as a reference point to speculate that air quality in Faridabad is marginally worse than in Gurugram, but local authorities need to first conduct studies to identify the city’s emission sources, carrying capacity and so on before,” said a Delhi-based air quality scientist.