Kerala - Kochi   

City to have air quality monitoring facility

Kochi: The city will soon have a continuous real time air quality monitoring station, as part of a nation-wide air quality surveillance project being initiated by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).

Kochi is one among 16 cities identified by the Central Board for setting up the facility. According to the CPCB, these cities fall under the category of areas “where air quality is deteriorating and urgent action is required.”

Kochi was placed 13th in the list of cities with high levels of Suspended Particulate Matter and Respirable Dust Particles. Some of the other cities in the list include Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Bhopal, Chennai, Dhanbad, Hyderabad, Indore and Jaipur.

The CPCB officials who visited Kochi recently had submitted a preliminary report on the existing quality monitoring network in the city. An air quality modelling will be introduced on the basis of further studies in this regard.

Elaborating on the proposal, Member Secretary of the State Pollution Control Board, S.D. Jeyaprasad, said the modelling would help in predicting the air quality in a specific area based on a real time basis. The presence of pollutants could also be analysed quickly by measuring the wind direction and velocity in that area, he said.

Besides, parameters of air quality, measurement of meteorological parameters will be done at these stations. The ambient air quality data will be available on continuous basis and it will be displayed on the website.

The real time values will be displayed on electronic display boards at the sites. The stations will be operated on continuous basis at least for 350 days in a year, round the clock.

The data will be interpreted and information in the form of ‘air pollution index’ will be provided for the benefit of the people.

The State Pollution Control Board has requested the Central Board to set up an automatic air monitoring station in Kochi. The estimate cost of the facility is Rs.80 lakh. The CPCB had suggested that it would provide 50 per cent capital cost while the State Board should meet the balance. In the first phase of the project, the Central Board had set up automatic air monitoring stations in cities like Delhi and Mumbai free of cost.

The Member Secretary said the State Board had requested the CPCB to extend the scheme to Kerala also in view of the considerable expenditure required for setting up the automatic station in Kochi. The proposal is now pending before the Central Board.

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