MPCB’S last warning on air pollution plight, unheeded
Babus are caught napping, as Mumbai’s air quality worsens
MUMBAI: A thick blanket of haze covered the city for the third consecutive day, with the air quality index (AQI) rising to 309, categorised as ‘very poor’, on Tuesday. As per the System of Air Quality Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), a network of monitoring stations, an AQI between 200 and 300 is ‘poor’ and if it is in excess of 300 it is marked ‘very poor’.
On Monday, AQI touched the ‘poor’ level. Of the nine monitoring stations of SAFAR, six placed the quality of air in this category. The morning temperatures – at 23.4 degrees Celsius, four degrees above normal – too added to the discomfort.
The wind speed, measured at 7 km per hour, prompted former NEERI director Rakesh Kumar to say that while the average wind speed is 5-10 km per hour, cleaning the current haze would require wind speeds at 12 km per hour.
While environmentalists continued to attribute the poor air quality to a combination of meteorological factors – lack of sea breeze over land and inability of low wind speed to disperse pollutants – and anthropogenic activities such as ongoing construction of infrastructure projects, vehicular emissions and road dust suspension, a section of experts has called for the need to implement the emergency response system, on the lines of Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), which is in place in Delhi.
Last month, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) had asked the municipal corporations to brace themselves for such an eventuality. “The Centre had approved the clean air programme for state. We sent a letter to all municipal corporations to take steps under GRAP if AQI is bad and they have to take action,” V M Motghare, joint director of MPCB, said.
Kumar said the haze is particulate matter – construction dust – hanging as high as 15-18 floors. “What we are seeing is not from a dust storm, it’s local source. We don’t have data on the number of vehicles plying for construction, which is mostly overnight when the mixing height is low. We need air quality sensors at construction sights,” said Kumar.
He added, “Delhi has an action plan, but there has been no improvement because it’s applied after AQI levels get serious. GRAP cannot be AQI based; it has to be based on a combination of weather outlook of up to 15 days, local sources and air quality data dating back
many years.”
According to Ronak Sutaria, founder of Respirer Life Science, many parts of central Mumbai were in the red compared to suburbs like Andheri. Deonar and Mazagaon rated in the worst category. The worst hours in most locations, he added, were between 10am and 12 noon, which seemed to indicate a regional dust blowing into the city at that time.
“A response action plan like stopping heavy diesel vehicles from plying and a halt on construction activities for a couple of days can have a significant impact in improving air quality. Forecasting systems can help in
recommending health precautions to combat such severe episodic conditions,” said Sutaria. HT on December 20, 2021, reported Maharashtra government’s plans to implement an emergency response system, along the lines of Delhi’s graded action plan to combat air pollution.
For the state, MPCB has categorised air quality in four stages (from ‘moderate’ to ‘emergency’) based on the daily concentration of particulate matter pollutants PM2.5 and PM10. Activities such as water sprinkling, dust sweeping and deployment of anti-smog guns will be put into action when air
quality touches the ‘severe’ category for a period of 48 hours, i.e. when PM2.5 levels exceed 215ug/m3 and PM10 exceeds 431ug/m3.
Avick Sil, director, Enviro Policy Research Institute, called for an audit of the status of the GRAP that Maharashtra had drafted. “Otherwise it will end up like the Chitale committee report on the Mithi river where nothing concrete has been undertaken and we still talk about the river every monsoon.” “We can’t stop construction activities since people will lose their jobs overnight. Are smog towers in Delhi working today? We have to look at sustainable solutions.”
This clearly is a far cry from reality – Mumbai’s AQI is going from ‘poor’ to ‘very poor’ in various parts but the state is yet to come up with measures to address the problem. The state does not even have a full-time environment minister.
Principal secretary of the environment department, Pravin Darade, however, said the authorities are constantly monitoring the air quality.
Meanwhile, acknowledging that vehicles add to the pollution, Motghare placed his bets on the government’s plans to roll out electric vehicles by 2025. He called for mechanical sweeping to reduce dust particles on the road. “The MPCB has also put restrictions on burning of bio mass. There is dust due to the big redevelopment activity. We have suggested plants for construction and demolition debris,” he added.
Despite calls and messages, Municipal Commissioner I S Chahal, who is also the chief of disaster management authority, for Mumbai did not respond.
Chief Minister Eknath Shinde holds the charge of environment and climate change department, but his office is yet to hold any meeting on the issue, even as Mumbai’s situation is becoming alarming.
Former state environment minister and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray said: “The issue of air pollution depends on technical grounds. We have to track what is causing it. The government has to decide this on an SOS basis. There is absolutely no official word from the government -- it does not even recognise this as an issue.”