Ambient Air Quality of Varanasi

[Ashutosh Kumar Pandey]

During Monitoring of ambient air quality of Varanasi city I have noted that level of SPM was found above the standards given by CPCB most of the times...

 

What may be the passible causes???

 

 

[Dr. Sudhanshu Kumar]

Dear Ashutosh,

As a research scholar, you should not really worry about the CPCB norms; it’s for compliance purpose only.  I understand you should have advised us the possible causes because you did monitoring and very much familiar about your monitoring setup.

Best Wishes

Sudhanshu

[DR. KAWALJEET SINGH]

First off - CPCB must have ensured the monitoring was carried out on the tallest structure at the monitoring point. That takes care of the wind blown dust - provided of course the wind was not hard and sustained from a direction. Intersections give a higer value of SMP. That is ascribed to rubber particles off the tyres. Yet the height of the station takes care of that. Smaller particles - even rubber give them out - eddies in to the ambient atmosphere. The general trend of over lelve SPM is an urban Pan India happening. The depletion of trees in th urban environment also adds to this. True - you are not allowed to cut any trees in the city limits. But then, we are not exactly re-planting to make up for an increased anthropogenic contribution.

[anubha goel]

the source of SPM (> 10 um) is mostly wind-blown dust. Dust from roads is also a source but it more to ultrafine particles (<1 um). With increased urbanization and road traffic things are going to get worse, not better.

[Pradeep Kumar Pathak]

not only Varanasi most of the cities in india have particulate level more than high resulting due to heavy traffic load & rapid urbanization.....so its not a matter to astonish...