New Delhi: Air pollutant concentrations “violated standards” at most places in Delhi on the second day of the odd-even scheme whose second phase has been rolled out in the national capital, a green body said today.
“PM 10 (particles with diameter less than 10 micrometer)and PM 2.5 (particles with diameter less than 2.5 micrometer) concentrations violated the standards at most places in Delhi.
“The 24-hourly pollutant concentrations in Delhi are 1-2.8 times above the standard of PM 2.5 and about 1-1.3 times above the standard of NO2,” The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) said in its air quality assessment report for April 16, released today.
The green body said, “NCR towns like Noida, Ghaziabad and Gurgaon show PM 2.5 levels as 90, 102, 52 g/m3, respectively against the standard of 60 g/m3. NO2 levels were found to be violating in Delhi but in control in the other NCR towns.”
“It will be interesting to assess the pollutant concentrations with the start of next week,” it said.
TERI had earlier said that Delhi needs stringent measures for control of air quality. Odd-even is only one of these initiatives, and many more interventions need to be made at NCR scale and across different sectors for effective control of air pollution.
TERI has been carrying out a trend analysis of the three main pollutants PM 10, PM 2.5 and NO2 at nine locations – Mandir Marg, R K Puram, Punjabi Bagh, Anand Vihar, Bahadurgarh, Lodhi Road, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Noida.
