‘Delhi’s air quality may get worse in coming days’

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court's Environment Pollution (Prevention & Control) Authority (EPCA) on Friday held a meeting and ordered all directions discussed in previous meeting to curb air pollution to be implemented from today itself. EPCA'S orders come in the wake of the deteriorating air quality in the national capital, which reached "poor category" on Friday.

Central-government System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR) has predicted that the air quality may go down in the coming days.

“Today EPCA directed that any industry running on coal or other sources has to be stopped. All industries in Delhi have already been converted in PNG. But, whosoever is working on liquid fuel they will be closed from today,” said a Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) official. Delhi witnessed season's worse air quality on Friday, with SAFAR indicating that Diwali will witness the “highest impact of fire cracker emissions” in the early morning of October 28. “In a normal course, the stubble burning induced impact is expected to be moderate and if no additional emissions due to firecrackers are added then Air Quality will remain in middle range of very poor during Diwali period,” said SAFAR. However, if 50 percent of the total load of fire crackers is added, the AQI may plunge into severe category for a short period, said the SAFAR report.

Meanwhile, SAFAR forecasted that stubble burning in Haryana and Punjab is moderate, however, it could increase gradually. “Change in transport level (boundary layer) wind direction to northwesterly is forecasted by tomorrow which will lead to a significant biomass intrusion (15 to 20 percent) to Delhi region,” reported SAFAR. A sharp deterioration in AQI to the higher end of the very poor category is forecasted for October 26. Areas such as Anand Vihar (302), Wazirpur (322), DTU (307), Mundka (320) remained in “very poor category”.