NEW DELHI (The Thursday Times) — Smog in India’s capital this week was so severe that it pushed pollution monitors past their upper measurement limit, a concentration equivalent to 66 times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum, regulators said, after opposition politicians accused the authorities of hiding the worst readings.
Air quality stations stopped reporting for several hours overnight from Sunday into Monday, just as pollution surged with fireworks for Diwali. When the monitors resumed, about eight hours after the fireworks peaked, a city government station at Mandir Marg recorded 879 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic metre, more than 58 times the WHO daily limit of 15.
‘Data fraud’
“The government which shuts down air quality monitoring stations on the night of Diwali, the government that does data fraud, how will you trust such a government?” said Saurabh Bharadwaj, the Delhi president of the Aam Aadmi Party.
“If Diwali night’s PM2.5 is not in the record, who will answer for that air?” asked Ajay Maken, a senior Congress lawmaker. His party colleague Pawan Khera added: “The fact that the data has gone missing doesn’t mean the pollution has disappeared too.”
The Central Pollution Control Board rejected the accusation of deliberate under-reporting. Particulate analysers installed when the National Air Quality Index was introduced in 2015 are calibrated to measure up to 1,000 micrograms per cubic metre, and readings beyond that range are treated as out of range and left out of the calculations. “During extreme episodes, which are occasional like Diwali firecracker bursting, this may appear as a data gap at the particular station concerned,” the board said.
The smog does not stop at the border. Earlier this week Lahore topped the world’s pollution rankings, and smog drove the second Sri Lanka Test out of the city.
