Comment on Rickshaw research reveals extreme Delhi pollution

Rickshaw research reveals extreme Delhi pollution

Average pollution levels, depending on the pollutant, were 50 percent to 8 times higher on the road than urban background readings, including official ambient air pollution measures, according to research by Apte and his partners at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi. New Delhi, like most cities, places their air monitors far from primary pollution sources like highways or industrial plants so that no single source can affect ambient readings, which are meant to represent an average pollution exposure from all sources. [...] most people spend a lot of time in traffic in India. India's new Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken steps to cut down the popularity of cars running on diesel, one of the dirtiest burning fuels, by pegging its cost to world market prices and scrapping a discount that had encouraged diesel consumption. Unchecked, today's vehicle trends in India could lead to a three-fold increase in levels of PM 2.5 by 2030 — the tiny particulate matter believed to cause the most damage to human health — according to a study this month by The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, University of California, San Diego and the California Air Resources Board. The city reports several key pollutants and this month launched an air quality index, boiling down the ambient readings to a single daily number indicating whether the air is healthy, poor, harmful or hazardous. Apte, who in January starts as an assistant professor of environmental engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, said that such indices, while perhaps easier for citizens to digest, represent vague urban background readings and can't help residents understand exactly what risks they face. For comparison, he also took readings from inside regular cars with the windows rolled up, and from a rooftop monitor that stood for ambient air quality readings — or what the government might record and report to the public.

 

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