Red Alert !!!   

Think Before you Breathe...
 

Close your eyes. Well, imagine that you have closed them, ok? Now create this image in your mind. Its a simmering summer day in Delhi, and you are crossing one of the city’s busiest traffic junctions. You are in a hurry and panting hard as you rush along. Then you pause for a moment to take a deep breath. HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! You cant do that! Chances are you will break into fits of cough, may even develop a chest pain and be laid up for the next couple of days with a severe congestion.

Why? Well, you have just breathed in a lungful of ozone, a gas known to be ‘extremely hazardous for human health’. In fact, you have sucked in a deadly cocktail of poisonous gases, made up of nitrogen oxides (NO), carbon monoxide (CO),benzene, a range of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and a variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). And as a side order, you have inhaled huge quantities of ultrafine particles that may have already entered your lung and caused serious injuries. They have probably flown into your bloodstream by now and are moving ominously towards your heart.

No you are not living a nightmare, or watching a bad horror movie. All this can actually happen if you just breathe in too deeply, or too often in the streets of Delhi, or Kolkata, or Raipur, or Kanpur, or any other metro or small town you live in. If you are in India. But this is not news to you, or any Indian citizen, is it? We already know that our cities are caught in a toxic web. And that the air quality in all urban centres fails to meet the global healthbased standards. Some of us are even aware that newer pollutants like nitrogen, ozone and other air toxics have begun to add to the public health challenge. In other words, in the current situation, every time we breathe we run the risk of falling sick.

  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:

• 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?

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.

   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.

So we don’t have any choices here, anymore.

    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?

	Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) A pex national pollution monitoring body responsible for implementation of air quality regulations. Oversees and coordinates the National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP). D irectly monitors air quality in Delhi. Responsible for quality control
National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) National level government research agency. Monitors seven metros and reports data to NAMP	State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) Responsible for air quality monitoring at states/local level. Reports data under NAMP. Also carries out monitoring under state ambient air quality monitoring programme. Responsible for quality control	Pollution Control Committee (PCC) Pollution control committees are responsible for monitoring in Union T erritories and feed data to NAMP
	OTHERS Some educational and research institutions carry out air monitoring to report data to NAMP and state programmes

Where are we going wrong?

Almost on all fronts. Here is the reality check.

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.

Again, the monitoring process need to take into account the fact that different pollutants have different health risks and concentrate on only those posing the greatest threat. For example, in many Western countries, the health effects of NO2, particulates and O3 are considered to be lethal. On the other hand, concentrations of SO2 have fallen in recent years, and it has ceased to be a health problem. So the monitoring of SO2 has been reduced to a minimum, while expanding the monitoring networks for NO2 and ultrafine particles like PM10,PM2.5. But in India, extensive SO2 monitoring facilities continue to exist, though its levels are way below standard. Though the levels of O3, sulphate and other air toxics are expected to be very high in Indian cities, the monitoring network has not been adapted to track these deadly poisons.

  Challenged, technically… 

Ideally, a city should have an efficient automatic monitoring network. A computerised system would measure all major pollutants and provide data continuously to a central control. This can then be fed to the public information display system, for regular health alerts. But in India, the high cost of such an infrastructure prevents its application in most of the cities. So, only a few big metros like Delhi have hybrid systems — a combination of manual and automatic monitors.

Now, manual monitoring is low cost and easy to operate. But it has some serious limitations. Take the case of one of the most harmful pollutants—particulates. In a manual system daily update of its peak levels cannot be monitored, so any in-depth analysis of the real problem sources within the cities has to be ruled out.

Tell the people

The most important step. Keeping the public informed so that they were aware of the level of risks they face. Easy and regular access to air quality data is vital for this.
In India, for a long time data updates was a serious hurdle. There was a considerable time lag in reporting — nearly one to two years! According to CPCB, manual data processing from across the region (read SPCBs) takes a long time. However, of late, the time lag for all stations in Delhi has been reduced considerably. From stations with online monitoring systems, it is possible to access the current data almost on a daily basis. The CPCB has attempted to improve this online system of data reporting to enable SPCBs to directly feed data from different cities to the central database called Environmental data bank, for further processing. Nearly, 240 stations from round the country currently report data online. However, there is still a time lag in publishing of processed and analysed national air quality data by CPCB under NAMP. But experts say that cities should move towards building the capacity to relay data on daily basis. Up-to-date information on air quality help influence people to behave in more environment-friendly ways.

But…do we understand the data? Really?

Fact and figures, even if they are fed to us everyday can be pretty confusing to a lay person. So we know that particulate pollution load in our city is XX microgramme per cubic metre. But is that good, average or bad? If it is bad, how seriously affected are we?

Global experience has shown that data on the concentrations of pollutants holds no meaning for people. It becomes relevant to a common citizen only when an index or rating system is used that groups the concentrations of several pollutants into broad bands and describes air quality in terms of good, moderate, poor and hazardous. Rating of the air quality or using numerals to denote the quality — known as air quality indices — is the most commonly used method (see Box: Health alerts). These are flashed on a daily basis through public information systems to alert people. This can serve the dual purpose of alerting people to take adequate protection to reduce health risks and also in prompting city authorities to take emergency measures to fix the problem.

How to clear the air...

Self care: a policeman scarfs up his face to avoid intake of unclean air

Make it legal
As you must have comprehended by now, air quality management is a job of stupendous scale. It requires stringent, strategic planning that includes huge investments, enormous technical upgrades and skills, and a set of laws that can force the laggard government agencies to get their act together. Currently air quality standards are not legally enforceable. That is, a state government cannot be penalized if its cities continue to remain severely polluted. Or if the CPCB sets regional targets to reduce pollution load, the administrative authorities in these zones may fail to meet those and still go scot free!! This needs to change, don’t you think?

Gear up to fight it. NOW!
The key word as far as air quality management goes is ‘urgent’. But despite the obvious fallout, the Union government—which is currently revising the air quality standards and also including new pollutants for regulations—has been sitting on it for a very long time. Meanwhile, for cities like Delhi, Kanpur and score of others, time is running out pretty fast. So here is a list of things which need to be put on fast track too, to counter the attack of the deadly gases The government must invest in technology upgrades to ensure flawless, uninterrupted monitoring.

Air Quality Index of Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi
The CSE conducts air quality monitoring in its office site and interprets the data as per the U nited States Environmental Pollution Agency (US EPA) methodology. In this system the a ir quality of a particular day is given a descriptor as per the level to which it has exceeded the respective standards of pollutants. T he methodology of calculating the index for a day involves certain modifications as per India’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The corresponding index values with descriptors and color codes are as follows:

Air Quality Index Reporting
	Index value	Description
	0-50	Good
	51-100	Margi nal (moderate)
	101-200	Unhealthy (poor)
	201-300	Very unhealthy (very poor)
	301+	Critical

Four major pollutants reported here a re Suspended Particulate M atter, Respirable Suspended ParticulateMatter (PM10), N itrogen D ioxide, and Suphur dioxide.

The Union ministry of environment and forests must notify its proposed air quality standards without delay to help city governments enforce control strategies The city government must introduce a daily health alert system to inform the sensitive population (children, elderly and those suffering from respiratory and cardiac problems) about the high daily levels and enforce emergency pollution control measures such as restricting traffic, and allowing only clean fuel and vehicles and public transport in affected areas till the levels dissipate.

We have a role to play too, a very critical one. It has been proved beyond doubt that the primary source of air pollution is vehicular emission. These are gases spewed by the cars, bikes, and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) that most of us drive everyday.

Air quality rating across countries

USA
The Clean Air Act (CAA) in US ensures that metropolitans collect air quality details for public information on air quality index. The UESPA index is a pplied for assessment that a ssigns colours for concentra tions of pollutants: green for “good”, yellow for “moderate”, orange for “unhealthy” .

MEXICO
Pollution alert is issued in three stages

Phase I: When particulate matter exceeds 1.75 times the standard or when the ozone concentration scales by 2.40 times. This calls for 30-40 percent cut in emissions, ha lting vehicles, street repairs to minimize jams and a note of caution to drivers not to use cars, most polluting vehicles are stopped from plying.

Phase I I : When either ozone or PM (particulate matter) triples up. Schools are closed to reduce the number of vehicles .

Phase III: Involves emergency call for closing down industries and curtailing other activities.

UK
Public information about air quality is disseminated by the hour. Information on five air pollutants is updated every hour. The air pollution Information Service uses four color bands to describe levels of pollution.

FRANCE
There are ten levels to air quality. The first represents excellent quality and the tenth a trocious. To discourage private transport, public transport is made free.