Mumbai air has turned dangerous, city jumps from 5th most polluted to 3rd in a week
Listen 00:00 0.5x 0.75x 1x 1.25x 1.5x 2x AI Narration This audio is AI generated.
A week after Mumbai came fifth in the list of most polluted cities in the world, a latest ranking carried out by IQAir — an independent US-based global air quality assessment organisation has classified Mumbai as the third most polluted city globally, with an AQI reading of 166, in a list of 122 global cities.
Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) topped the list with an AQI of 192, while Kolkata ranked second with an AQI of 170. In all three Indian cities, PM 2.5 has been identified as the primary pollutant.
The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) on Monday showed Mumbai’s AQI in the unhealthy category at 114. The CPCB dashboard also showed that 13 out of the 20 AQI monitors operational in Mumbai have shown unhealthy readings — Navy Nagar (Colaba) 158, Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) 156, Andheri East 145, Siddharth Nagar (Worli) 143 and Malad 138.
Civic officials said that unlike the state and central pollution boards, the sensors used by these private monitoring organisations record real-time AQI numbers by running averages.
“Private monitoring organisations use hourly averages to show more recent changes. A sudden pollution spike may therefore show up sooner on a platform like IQAir,” said additional municipal commissioner Avinash Dhakane, adding that most of them use sensors whose data source is confined within a short span of area only.
However, the monitors used by government bodies such as CPCB record ambient air at a given geographical location.
“Private agencies combine data from government stations and other sources, including low-cost sensors. Their city reading is based on the median of hourly station AQI values; therefore, they reflect a different mix of numbers for Mumbai, which will not be correct to compare,” Dhakane said.
According to experts, rising pollution levels are a direct cause of the ongoing El-Niño — a naturally occurring climate pattern marked by the abnormal warming of surface waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.
Original Source
This content was distilled for a focused reading experience. All rights belong to The Indian Express.
Read original publication