Air Quality Monitoring Stations To Be Set Up In More Cities : Prakash Javedkar

08 May, New Delhi

The Government plans to set up air quality monitoring stations, which are presently functional at 10 places, in more cities in the country.

Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar informed Rajya Sabha Thursday that the air quality monitoring stations is also proposed to be expanded to cover the state capital as well as those cities having a population of more than 46-million.

Presently, air quality data for cities — Delhi, Mumbai,Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kanpur, Lucknow, Varanasi, Agra and Faridabad — are connected to Air Quality Index (AQI), which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 6th of last month to disseminate air quality information, the Minister said.

He said, the AQI has six categories of air quality which include good, satisfactory, moderately polluted, poor, very poor and severe with distinct colour schemes.

Javadekar said that each of these categories are associated with likely health impact and considers eight pollutants.

Responding to another question, the Minister said that the Government has notified environmental norms for polluting industries to control air pollution under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.

These norms are to be complied with by all the industries. Besides, the Government has also notified emission standards for on-road vehicles and mass emission standards for new vehicles under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.