One-fourth of Delhi air ‘severely’ polluted

By Aakanksha Khajuria New Delhi, Oct 23 : Nine of the 36 pollution monitoring station in Delhi showed ‘severe’ air quality index on Friday, according to the Central Pollution Control Board’s data.
According to the pollution monitoring agency, AQI in North Delhi’s Alipur area was 447, which falls in the ‘severe’ category, followed by Shadipur, Wazirpur, Jahagirpuri, Mundka, Patparganj, Anand Vihar, Bawana, and Vivek Vihar.
Besides these, 26 pollution monitoring station showed ‘very poor’ reading and one logged moderate air quality index.
The overall pollution levels continued to be in the lower end of the ‘very poor’ category at 372 at noon.
Vijay Kumar Sonu, Head of Environment Monitoring and Research Centre at IMD told IANS that “due to calm wind there is no dispersion of pollutants”. “The wind speed will, however, pick up from October 26 and would likely result in improvement of AQI,” he said.
The System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research, which comes under the aegis of Ministry of Earth Sciences, also stated that the most dominant factor for deterioration is extremely calm surface wind in Delhi, combined with low inversion height followed by moderate stubble related intrusion.