Air Pollution In India

 Meaning of Air Pollution:

Air pollution may be defined as imbalance in the quality of air so as to cause ill effects. According to Maxwell, “our enormously accelerated abuse of the atmosphere has become a health hazard and a threat to life, damaging both plants and animals in areas polluted with poisonous fumes, dust and smoke”.

The different types of pollutants are continuously introduced into the atmosphere and are removed by natural process of cleaning. But when pollution exceeds the atmosphere’s self purifying capacity, accumulation of pollutants occurs causing serious hazards for environment and other organisms including humans.

The following are the main reasons for the increasing rate of our pollution:

(i) Poisonous gases and other particles emitted from industries without any treatment.

(ii) Heavy increase in the number of automobiles and their emission.

(iii) Increased use of chemicals and petro-chemicals.

(iv) Population concentration in cities.

(v) Fast rate of deforestation.

(vi) Tests of experiments of atomic weapons.

(vii) Tests of chemical and bio chemical weapons.

(viii) Space research and satellite wastes.

(ix) Unorganized mining and traditional practices of the use of fuel wood etc.

Certain natural events such as volcanic eruption, dust storms etc., are also a cause of air pollution. In order to understand the nature of air pollution it is necessary to know the various sources of pollution.

AIR POLLUTION IN INDIA

Industrialization and urbanization have resulted in a profound deterioration of India’s air quality. Of the 3 million premature deaths in the world that occur each year due to outdoor and indoor air pollution, the highest number are assessed to occur in India. According to the World Health Organisation, the capital city of New Delhi is one of the top ten most polluted cities in the world.

Surveys indicate that in New Delhi the incidence of respiratory diseases due to air pollution is about 12 times the national average. According to another study, while India’s gross domestic product has increased 2.5 times over the past two decades, vehicular pollution has increased eight times, while pollution from industries had quadrupled.

Sources of air pollution, India’s most severe environmental problem, come in several forms, including vehicular emissions and untreated industrial smoke. Apart from rapid industrialization, urbanization has resulted in the emergence of industrial centres without a corresponding growth in civic amenities and pollution control mechanisms.

Regulatory reforms aimed at improving the air pollution problem in cities such as New Delhi have been quite difficult to implement, however. For example, India’s Supreme Court recently lifted a ruling that it imposed two years ago which required all public transport vehicles in New Delhi to switch to compressed natural gas (CNG) engines by April 1,2001.

This ruling, however, lead-to the disappearance of some 15,000 taxis and 10,000 buses from the city, creating public protests, riots, and widespread “commuter chaos”. The court was similarly unsuccessful last year, when it attempted to ban all public vehicles that were more than 15 years old and ordered the introduction of unleaded gasoline and CNG.

India’s high concentration of pollution is not due to lack of effort in building a sound environmental legal regime, but rather to a lack of enforcement at the local level.

Efforts are currently underway to change this as new specifications are being adopted for auto emissions, which currently account for approximately 70% of air pollution. In the absence of coordinated government efforts, including stricter enforcement, this figure is likely to rise in the coming years due to the sheer increase in vehicle ownership.

Air pollution is considered to be one of the most dangerous and common kinds of environmental pollution that has been reported in most industrial towns and metropolitans of India and abroad, such as Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Kanpur, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Firozabad, Tuticorin etc. In foreign countries, London, New York, Tokyo and Pittsburg etc., were worst affected by air pollution.

The National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur initiated the air quality monitoring programme in 1978 in 10 cities in India. It provides data to study the air quality trends on a long-term basis.

The analysis of data of NEERI revealed that annual mean values of the SPM indicated positive trends in Bombay, Cochin and Jaipur, S02 levels also showed a positive trend in Bombay, Cochin and Nagpur, NO2 levels showed a positive trend in Bombay, Calcutta, Cochin, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kanpur, and Nagpur.

Cochin appears to indicate increasing trends with respect to all pollutants. Delhi and Nagpur showed increased trends with respect to gaseous pollutants.

According to NEERI’s survey, Chembur- Bombay area of Bombay is having highest SO, pollution, while New Delhi is having highest air pollution of suspended particulate matter (SPM). In another survey, Calcutta is reported to have highest carbon monoxide pollution during peak traffic hours. The following Table indicates the levels of SO2 and suspended particulate matter (SPM) in air during 1980.

According to Prof. J.M. Dave, Dean of the School of Environmental Science at JNU and his team of researchers, 400 tonnes of pollutants are emitted every day in Delhi by nearly 500,000 vehicles according to 34 per cent of the smoke and dust emitted into the city.

According to a report prepared by the Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun, if vehicle pollution remains unchecked, the emission by vehicles in Bombay would reach the level of 1,07,000 tonnes of Carbon monoxide and 37,000 tonnes of hydrocarbons in early nineties and by 2000 AD, it has been estimated that 1,85,000 tonnes of Carbon monoxide and 6,93,000 tonnes of hydrocarbons will be released in Bombay city’s atmosphere.

Almost all north Indian cities undergo thermal inversion that makes the air nearest the ground colder than the air higher up. This makes the noxious gases which are driven up by the heating of the earth in the day time, descend once again at night.

What descends however, have been not the emissions of those night time hours alone, but of the entire day. In almost all cities, vehicular traffic pollution accounts for 50 per cent of the pollution and in some cities, it is even more. The problem of vehicular pollution in India is becoming worse day by day.

Adding to the problem is the pollution created by smoking almost in all places. Formerly, this was confined to developed countries alone. Now, this plague has caught hold of most of the Third World countries.

In India, smoking cigarettes and bidis has reached an uncontrolled level, causing health hazard, not only to the smokers, but also to no-smokers who become silent smokers due to the pollution of the atmosphere. At least 80 per cent of deaths due to lung cancer is the result of smoking. Nearly 75 per cent of smokers suffer from chronic bronchitis and emphysema and 25 per cent from Ischaemic heart disease.