Mumbai: For the sixth consecutive day, the city is struggling to breathe fresh air as its Air Quality Index (AQI) continues to be in the ‘very poor’ category. According to the System of Air Quality Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), Thursday saw an AQI of 305.
Four out of the nine AQI monitoring stations in Mumbai registered ‘very poor’ indices Thursday evening, while the other four registered poor indices.
Though the SAFAR data showed Mumbai’s AQI as very poor, the daily 4pm bulletin by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) showed the AQI level to be in the poor category at 251. The discrepancy in the AQI levels is so because SAFAR has monitoring stations at nine locations in the city, whereas CPCB calculates the overall AQI based on 18 monitoring stations, including those in the same locations as SAFAR.
Environmentalists continued to attribute the poor air quality levels to a combination of meteorological factors –lack of sea breeze over land and inability of low wind speed to disperse pollutants — and anthropogenic activities such as ongoing construction of various infrastructure projects, vehicular emissions and road dust suspension.
The five stations where AQI remained in the very poor category were Colaba (318), Malad (340), Mazgaon (369), Andheri (315) and Chembur (337). The AQIs reported at the four other stations were Bhandup (283), Bandra Kurla Complex (285), Worli (208) and Borivali (235).
An AQI of 0-50 is good, and 51 to 100 is satisfactory. 101 to 200 moderate, excess of 200 is poor, excess of 300 very poor, 400+severe, 500+very severe.
Prolonged exposure to such poor air can lead to a range of respiratory and cardiovascular problems.
The city’s weather on the other hand will also see some changes as the India Meteorological Department (IMD)’s, five-day forecast indicates that the city will likely to see light rainfall on December 12.