The air quality in Maharashtra’s capital Mumbai, which has been falling in the past few days, showed a marginal improvement on Saturday.
The AQI in Mumbai was recorded at 283 (bad), while Delhi’s AQI stood at 156 (moderate), according to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecast and Research (SAFAR).
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Mumbai’s air quality worsened again
An AQI between 0-50 is termed ‘good’, between 51-100 it is ‘satisfactory’, 101-200 is ‘moderate’, 201-300 ‘poor’, 301-400 is ‘very poor’ and beyond 400, AQI is labelled ‘severe’.
Pollution levels in Mumbai have been rising over the past several weeks, making it difficult for residents, especially the elderly and those with lung problems, to walk outside.
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Most poor, very poor AQI in winter
This winter, Mumbai recorded the highest number of days with ‘poor’ to ‘very poor’ AQI between November 2022 and January 2023, nearly double the number of days in the same period in 2021-2022 and 2020-2021, and thrice the days during the same period in 2019-2020.
The poor air quality has been blamed on external sources, including construction and vehicular emissions.
BMC’s plans to fight increasing air pollution
Earlier this month, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had promised to allow citizens to breathe easy with a slew of initiatives in its 2023-2024 budget.
BMC Commissioner IS Chahal said 3,500 construction sites in Mumbai spew out dust and are the primary cause of air pollution.
Though the realty sector is the backbone of the economy as it employs millions of people, dust pollution needs to be controlled, for which the BMC will issue guidelines by next month-end to all realtors to ensure dust reduces and settles at the site itself.
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Among these would be dust screens on the external face of buildings where construction/finishing works are on, sprinkling water on these curtains and at the ground level open spaces, washing the tyres of all vehicles exiting these sites, covering all vehicles transporting debris/building materials, providing debris chutes during construction etc.
The city will have the highest number of air purification units in the country (19) at a total cost of Rs 54 crore, comprising 14 smog towers, each 30 feet, two for all the seven zones in Mumbai to control air quality through radio waves and electromagnetic actions.
These will ionise the particulate material and attract other air particles, which will become so heavy that they will fall and settle the dust, reducing 45 per cent of pollution in a 1 km radius.
Besides the 14 smog towers, another five air purifiers shall be installed in the congested areas of Dahisar Toll Post, Mankhurd, Mulund Toll Post, Kalanagar Junction and Haji Ali Junction.
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