LAHORE (The Thursday Times) — Lahore’s air quality index crossed 530 on Monday morning, deep in the hazardous band, as smog spread across Punjab and Gujranwala recorded readings as high as 675, according to air quality monitor IQAir.
At 8am, IQAir put Lahore’s index at 535, with fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, at 343 micrograms per cubic metre. These tiny particles can reach deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Pakistan’s permissible limit is 35 micrograms.
Five Punjab cities were among the six most polluted in the country in IQAir’s live ranking. Gujranwala led on 606 and Lahore followed on 509, with Faisalabad and Multan on 310 each and Sialkot on 260. Peshawar was sixth on 216. Readings changed quickly between hourly updates.
The spike follows a sharp rise in crop burning. NASA satellites detected 13,241 fire spots in Punjab between October 1 and 29, according to an analysis by the monitoring website HamariHawa, about 92 per cent of them on farmland. Around half came in the last seven days of the month, with Okara, Gujranwala and Nankana Sahib worst affected. Weak winds and cold-air inversions can trap that smoke close to the ground, along with emissions from vehicles and industry.
October had brought some relief. The Pakistan Air Quality Initiative found that PM2.5 in Lahore was lower than a year earlier, but said much of that was down to the weather. After accounting for weather conditions, it put the improvement at about 4 per cent, and levels stayed above the national limit on all of the 30 days it reported.
