With AQI at 327, Delhi’s air quality remains ‘very poor’ for 3rd day in row

New Delhi [India], October 31 (ANI): The overall air quality in Delhi continued to remain in the ‘very poor’ category for the third straight day on Tuesday morning, as per the SAFAR-India.

According to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR)-India, the overall air quality in the national capital is in the ‘very poor’ category with an Air Quality Index (AQI) of 327. After being in the ‘poor’ category with an AQI of 286 on Saturday, the city’s AQI has been in the ‘very poor’ category since then with 309 on Sunday and 322 on Monday.

Meanwhile, residents of the national capital criticised the Delhi government for the deteriorating air quality.

“This is happening due to the Arvind Kejriwal government… He used to say earlier that if my government is there, pollution will not happen… But it has increased as compared to earlier… The public is suffering because of this,” a resident said.

Apart from this, Om Prakash, a citizen of Delhi residing in Australia said that the air quality of the city under the ‘very poor’ category is prone to respiratory problems.

“We live in Australia and have come here for a few months. We get frightened by the level of pollution. It seems as if we are living here at the cost of our lives. The Delhi government keeps on saying that we will reduce pollution, but they have not given attention to it,” the NRI told ANI.

In the Delhi University area and Pusa, the quality of air was recorded as ‘very poor’ and ‘poor’ with AQI at 316 and 201, respectively at 7 am today.

The quality of air in the IIT Delhi region also remained in the very poor category with an AQI of 388. The quality of air at the Airport (T3) and Mathura Road was also in the very poor category, with an AQI of 329 and 330 respectively.

Meanwhile, Noida recorded an AQI of 375 (poor) and Gurugram 249 (poor).

Air Quality Index (AQI) is a tool for effective communication of air quality status to people in terms, which are easy to understand. It transforms complex air quality data of various pollutants into a single number (index value), nomenclature, and colour.

The AQI from 0 to 100 is considered good, while from 100 to 200 it is moderate, from 200 to 300 it is poor, and from 300 to 400 it is said to be very poor and from 400 to 500 or above it is considered as severe.

Last week, Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai said that a 15-point winter action plan is being implemented one by one to curb pollution.

“Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had earlier announced a 15-point winter action plan to curb the pollution caused by vehicles, biomass burning, dust, etc. Now this winter action plan is being implemented on the ground one by one to reduce pollution in the national capital,” Rai had told ANI.

The Delhi Minister added that since one of the major causes of pollution is vehicles, they have started the ‘Red Light on, Gaadi off’ campaign on October 26.”Now the data says that in AQI the level of particulate matter (PM) 10 is decreasing and that of PM2.5 is increasing. This means that pollution caused by vehicles and biomass burning is increasing. For this, the ‘Red Light on, Gaadi off’ campaign has been started,” the Delhi minister had said.