Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Air pollution is one of the foremost and grave public health and environmental anxiety in most of evolving countries. Objectives: The objective of this paper is to provide insight details about current situation of air quality across various cities present in India, along with countless origins and effects of air pollution. An attempt is made to make people aware about various types of gases and particulate matter present in air highlighting their effects on environment along with the various ways of overcoming this situation. Methods: The National Air Quality Index (NAQI) ensures comparison amongst various cities so that new measures can be formulated in order to decrease the quantity of particulate matter present in air. In this paper concentration of various pollutants along with various harmful gases for various cities of India are analyzed based on past NAQI data thereby highlighting those areas which are under extensive menace of pollution. Findings: It has been perceived from past few years that the rate at which Urban Air Pollution across India has grown is alarming due to severe unsafe web of particulate matter (PM) and harmful gases present in air that living organism’s breath. Levels of particulate matter are extremely higher in all cities of India. Only few cities are such that can be emphasized where Air Quality Monitoring (AQM) has started due to which they show some enhancement in quality of air but mostly affected areas are small and medium sized towns which suffer from phenomenal spurt in pollution in very critical manner. Due to increase in immense number of vehicles, industries and manufacturing units has resulted in excess assembly of pollutants in air making air pollution as a state of national emergency across various cities around the country. 

Keywords: Air Quality Monitoring, Gaseouspollutants, National Air Quality Index, Particulate Matter