Dust pollution taking toll on city

Mumbai: Mumbai’s air quality has been deteriorating over the years owing to increasing levels of PM10 which arises from dust pollution which has increased by 119.7 per cent between 2002 and 2017, according to a study ‘EnviStats 2019’ by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementa-tion.

On the occasion of World Environment Day, The Asian Age looks into the sources of Particulate Matter (PM) in the city that has adversely impacted its air quality.

 A study by the National Environment Engin-eering Research Institute (NEERI) carried out under Dr Rakesh Kumar, NEERI director, revealed that the particulate matter was mainly contributed from road dust (over 71 per cent) followed by industrial sources and area sources. Meanwhile, tailpipe emissions of vehicular sources also contributed to a significant amount of pollution in Mumbai’s air.

“Our study shows that although road dust and vehicular pollution has increased, the city is faring better in terms of industrial emissions. This is the initial stage of our study on emissions inventory and after the final results, we will be providing recommendations to the state government,” said Dr Ritesh Vijay, head of National Environment Engineering Research Institute Mumbai office.

 The report highlighted that among the total area source, construction activities contributed 8 per cent , followed by open burning and bakeries (3.7 to 3.5 per cent). “During the study period, the Mumbai metro work was in progress which contributed 3.2 per cent whereas a negligible share came from crematoria, hotels and restaurants domestic sectors and aircraft,” the report read.

While the vehicular pollution contributed to 4.78 per cent of the total emissions in Mumbai, emissions from heavy-duty vehicles were the highest at 3.3 per cent and three-wheelers were 1.1 per cent of the total emission loads, followed by emissions from two-wheelers and private-owned vehicles.

 For Mumbai’s clean-air action plan, the state government was currently looking into the sources of air pollution along with the areas that were hot beds of pollutants like PM10, PM2.5 and NOx among others.