While there are debates raging on the Internet, on whether January 1, 2020 can be termed as the start of the decade or not, but there will be no debates regarding this start being a healthy one, as far as the air in Mumbai city is concerned. Air Quality in the city has been a matter of discussion in the last few days.
What's more, the air quality of the city had significantly deteriorated from December 22. However, things have started to look up from January 1, 2020. On that day, the city’s Air Quality Index (AQI) stood at 175. While this still a little far off from being in the healthy range (which is considered to be under 100), but it is still the cleaned New Year morning that Mumbai has had since 2016.
In addition to this, the city’s annual average for the concentration of particulate matter lesser than 2.5 microns (PM 2.5) was 54 ug/ m3, which too was lowest since 2016 but it again was higher than the permissible limit of 40 ug/m3.
According to SAFAR, This year the overall concentration of PM 2.5 was lower due to the weather factors including the prolonged monsoon and the cyclones in the Arabian Sea.
While the year was off to a good start, the air pollution started to worsen as the day progressed and reached 204. Another interesting point to note about the pollution in Mumbai is that, while the concentration of PM 2.5 might have dipped, it’s share in the PM 10 composition increased. In Delhi, the ration of PM 2.5 to PM 10 is at 45 per cent but in Mumbai this stands at 65 per cent. So in the days to come the environmentalist will have to look at how to address this as well as the overall Air quality in the city.
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