Pollution in Kolkata already measuring high
Winter has not yet set in in any significant measure in Kolkata, but the city’s air quality index has already started to reside at the ‘poor’ level. On Wednesday, November 8, five of the seven air quality monitoring stations in the city—called Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS)—in the morning showed a ‘poor’ air quality index (AQI). An AQI between 201 and 300 is considered ‘poor’.
The seven AQI monitoring areas with ‘poor’ air quality were (in no particular order) Ballygunge, Jadavpur, Victoria, Bidhannagar and Fort William.
Only Rabindra Bharati University in the north and Rabindra Sarovar in the south were better off—in the ‘moderate’ category, with AQIs between 101 and 200.
The West Bengal Pollution Control Board Chairman Kalyan Rudra told The Times of India that airborne pollutants that enter the city from other states—being in the lower Gangetic basin, Kolkata gets airborne pollutants from regions in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, where levels are often severe—contribute to 51 per cent of the city’s pollution level, according to an IIT-Delhi study.
However, airborne particulate matters like PM10 and PM2.5 come not just from other states but are also contributed by vehicular exhaust, construction and demolition activities, crop residue and garbage burning, and domestic activities.
According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), in Bengal, airborne particulate matters like PM10 and PM2.5 increase several times the normal limits (which, in any case, is mostly above the permissible limits) during winter. Since these remain closer to the ground, being heavier than gases, they cause breathing issues, often severe.
