Bengaluru needs an environmental revamp

Air pollution affects human health, but sadly, as the city grows, so does the pollution and unfortunately, the current air quality monitoring is not very helpful.

Priority should be given to reducing air pollution at source rather than routinely monitoring the air with untested devices. But this is a long process.  For the city, the main causes of air pollution are the respirable (PM10) elements and fine dust 9PM2.5). The other sources are vehicles, dust in the air from roads , construction and demolition work, diesel generator sets and so on. What we need is a both short (within six months) and long term (24 months) plan to reduce air pollution in the city as implementation takes time.

The World Health Organisaton(WHO) is keen on India reducing its annual average PM2.5 to 10 µg/m3 and its 24 hour average to 25µg/m3. It would also like the country to reduce its annual average PM10 to 20 µg/m3 and its 24 hour average to 50µg/m3.

The Indian standard for PM2.5 is , however, 40 µg/m3 ( annual average) and 60 µg/m3 (24 hour average). As for PM10, Indian standards require it to be 60 µg/m3 ( annual average) and 100 µg/m3(24-hour average).

In many areas of the city the PM10 and PM2.5 levels are far above the WHO standards. The level of air pollution in the city is easy to gauge when you see people, including the traffic police, wearing masks, or covering their noses and mouths with a handkerchief  or duppatta or simply with their hands to avoid inhaling the pollutants.  

There are a number of ways to reduce air pollution such as using non-motorised transport, sweeping the dust off the roads, sprinkling treated sewage water at  construction and demolition sites to settle the dust, improving power supply  to cut down the use of diesel generation sets, speeding up work on the Namma Metro network, and making more   use of electric vehicles.

Enforcement should be given priority and experienced scientific and technical professionals roped in to work on air pollution issues as their inputs could prove valuable in combating it in the city.