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     Gobar times: Environment for Beginners

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Ask me! No?

C O V E R  S T O R Y

AIR ALARM
Fumbling in the dark

The alert that Gobar Times is raising in this issue is not about this well established fact. The real bad news is that even though ALL of us – which includes policy makers, industrialists, common citizens —are conscious of this horrible, life-threatening menace, the action agenda to get rid of it is practically non-existent. Oh, the government (along with the corporate houses!) keep coming up with announcements, alerts and clean-air drives.....

but the truth is none of us really know what to do.

Because India’s capacity to monitor and assess the problem of air pollution remains abysmally weak.

How? Let me list out some of the basic problems that ail the system:

Now,

you can open your eyes. Do you see the real picture emerging? The daily pollution alerts aired on the television channels and the bulletins published on the front pages of news papers notwithstanding, we are actually fumbling in the dark. Meanwhile, the deadly fumes are spreading over our cities like bushfire.


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Who does it now?

Before we try to find out what needs to be done in the future, lets check out the system that exists now. That is, who monitors air quality in Indian cities, currently?


Where are we going wrong?

Lets take up a particular case.

Ozone (O3), as I have mentioned before, is the emerging menace that has experts seriously worried. What are our policy makers doing to fight its growth? More importantly, do they have access to the basic facts required to assess exactly how critical the situation is, so that they can take the remedial steps?

Take Delhi for instance. Monitoring stations had been set up in Siri Fort and the ITO traffic intersection, two of the most congested sites in the city. When the reports submitted by these stations were examined by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) experts, they pointed out the O3 should not be measured in heavy traffic sites.

You see, ozone is not emitted directly from any source. Other pollutants, primarily nitrogen oxides (NOx) and hydrocarbons that are spewed by the growing number of vehicles and other sources in the city, react in the atmosphere under the influence of sunlight and high temperature to form ozone.

So to measure the accurate levels certain conditions have to be met, that would ensure the presence of these source gases in the right quantities. This critical factor was overlooked when the monitoring stations were selected in Delhi.

Result? The data needed to interpret the correct trends of O3 were just not available. And in such a situation how can the process of charting out action to combat it be up to the mark?


Missing monitors

The bad news is that wrong site selection is just one of the many weaknesses that plague our current monitoring network. In most Indian cities there aren’t enough stations at all! And the ones which do exist are not equipped to monitor the most dangerous pollutants adequately. The frequency and quality of data generated by these are also riddled with serious shortfalls.

Except for the big metros, most other cities have barely two to three (or, in rare cases, five) official monitoring stations. Bigger cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata or Hyderabad are better equipped. Delhi, with an estimated population of 14 million, covering an area of 1,486 square km, has 11 monitoring stations, which means one station to capture the air quality profile of an area as large as 124 square km.

On a nationwide scale very few pollutants are monitored on a regular basis;

Even the limited data that is generated is sketchy and inadequate, and do not meet the global quality benchmark;

Data from a large number of pollution monitoring stations are rejected as they fail to fulfill the minimum conditions required;

Weak science leads to weak action. Policy makers are often not clear on interpreting and using the results of the pollution inventory studies (mostly of questionable standard), while making policy decisions. Sometimes they turn a blind eye, deliberately. For instance, vehicles contribute heavily to particulate pollution load. But their role is purposely played down, and hard decisions are staved off, so as not to offend the powerful automobile industry barons. And in the absence of hard, authentic scientific data, how can anyone cry foul?
Measure, monitor,map …but why?
First of all, lets assess the scale of the problem. Are we hitting the panic button a little too early? After all, rigorous air quality management requires substantial funds, superior technical skills and institutional support. It also needs to be governed by stringent laws. In fact, an entire system has to be set up for it to work as per the global benchmark. Do we really need to do all this?

Yes we do. Because it is a matter of life and death. Quite literally. If air quality in a city fails to meet the prescribed standards then people and animals as well as plant life, are exposed to unacceptably high health risks. Annually, approximately 0.8 million premature deaths and 4.6 million lost life years worldwide are attributed to urban air pollution. And more than two thirds of these deaths are reported in developing Asian countries. India is, unfortunately, one of the front runners here.

Then again, effective planning requires accurate figures to judge the real scale and gravity of the problem. Poor, insufficient air quality data hampers proper risk assessment. This in turn, keeps policy action lenient, and even lax.

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