Take a deep breathe, Jaipur air is not as bad as you thought

 If you live in Vaishali Nagar or Vidhyadhar Nagar neighbourhoods of Jaipur, the air you breathe is of good quality, a report on the air quality index carried out in the city has revealed.

The report released on Friday, said that the overall air quality of Jaipur in the “moderate” range with an air quality index of 176.

Last December, the air quality index in Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the country, oscillated between 300 and 400.

The air quality index is centered on five chief pollutants – Particulate Matter with a diameter less than 10 micrometres (PM10), Particulate Matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), ozone (O3), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), and Carbon Monoxide (CO).

A monitoring station is be able to record the concentration of a particular pollutant at that moment in time, and its average over a period of time – for CO and O3, the average is taken over eight hours, while for the other three, it is a 24-hour average. The unit of measurement is microgram (or milligram in the case of CO) per cubic meter.

The air quality index at Vidyadhar Nagar and Vaishali Nagar neighbourhoods of Jaipur is the best whereas city neighbourhoods like Yadgar and Centre for Development of Stone and Sitapura industrial area was the most polluted.

The Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board (RSPCB) in association with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and the Rajasthan unit of the UNICEF conducted a pilot demonstration to study air quality index across Jaipur.

State pollution control board member secretary KCA Arun Prasad said the mobile air quality monitoring observatory equipped with advance online air quality analyzers, automatic weather station and UV-radiation analyzers has been brought from by SAFAR project of Pune. The study was conducted between May and July this year, he said.

“The assessment of gaseous pollutants in Jaipur during the summer months reveals that the levels are mostly within permissible limit baring a few exceptions.

“The situation is not alarming now but a long term strategy has to be planned to keep pollutants in check before it starts to become a matter of concern.”

During the study, a number of city residential neighbourhoods recorded high levels of fine particles of PM2.5 and PM10, he said.

He further said that it was heartening to notice that air pollution level in a number of industrial areas in Jaipur is good.

A number of industries are strictly following emission norms. The most polluted air was found at major traffic junctions where the emission from vehicles was the worst and needs to be tackled, he said.