Chennai: The manual air monitoring station located at T Nagar bus stand, has crossed the permissible levels of particulate matter (PM10), after the fire accident at Chennai Silks filled the locality with thick smoke. The pollution contents are all set to shoot up in the next two days, after the demolition of the seven-storied building on Thursday, said officials from the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board.
PM10 levels breached 102 micrograms per cubic metre on Thursday, even while the levels of Ammonia and dioxides of Sulphur and Nitrogen are within the prescribed limits, said a senior official of Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board. However, the official said that the breach is not due to fire accident on South Usman Road.
“In a commercial area like T Nagar, the PM10 levels should be 100 micrograms per cubic metre. As the station is located at a traffic junction, the excess could be due to the vehicular pollution and not due to the smoke,” the TNPCB official told DC.
Surprisingly, the pollution levels at the Mobile Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS) located at the Annai Vailankanni School, backside of the accident spot had not shown any breach in the pollutant levels. “We had changed the mobile station to Venkata Narayana Road on Thursday to check for the levels. We will get the data only by Friday,” said a TNPCB official. Reasoning the scenario, the official said: “Smoke has expanded and escaped into the atmosphere, due to hot summer winds. If the accident had occurred in a winter season, the pollution would have been worse.”
Environmentalist activist Sundar Rajan of ‘Poovulagin Nanbargal’ said, “TNPCB should make the data public, as it is an environmental disaster. The burning of Polyester is equivalent to the burning of plastic, which is a health hazard.”
