its shocking that my city (Vapi) and Ankleshwar are not in the list .. most number of per square km industries are highest in these regions ..?

Uncontrolled construction activity in the name of development (factories, residential and commercial complexes, roads), related industries (mining, blasting, cement), loss of urban tree cover, loss of forest cover, blatant disregard and violation of environmental laws. What more do we need?

I can elaborate and extrapolate this much higher but it will only start a verbal dispute here. So, I refrain from doing so.

I was born and raised in Bangalore...I really can't imagine growing old in this city!

I'd love to sell my house and move to a tier-2 or tier-3 city or town. I work in the IT sector and honestly my job really doesn't require me to come in to the office at all. In fact, my last 2 managers have worked from their homes in the US, several hours away and in a different city from the nearest company office. It's HIGH time Indian IT companies implement remote working in a big way. That'll help with the pollution and crowding issues in Bangalore a lot. (Of course, a LOT of useless middle/'people'-managers will also suddenly find themselves out of a job without anyone to boss around, but hey )

Another observation, recently, I met a bunch of youngsters who were raised at Auroville. I always assumed that Auroville was a pretty 'hippie' type place and I also didn't have a high opinion of alternative-type schools when it came to preparing kids for the 'real' competitive higher education scene in India. But I found these kids to be a lot more mature, evidently smarter and with a lot more sense of adventure and general healthy traits than the kids of friends raised in big cities like Bangalore and Mumbai who only seem to be interested in their parents' phones, laptops, or the IPL.

Perhaps our cities would do better if there were fewer of us living in them.

(PS: These are just observations guys, I'm no expert on pollution control, children or their education (and don't really have an interest in the last 2 topics. )

I think that corruption is the biggest cause.

I live in Faridabad, last 2 decades have seen a rampant degradation of city's green cover. About 25,000 trees were felled to build the metro. Wasn't there any other way really? The green cover in Aravalis, that houses multiple (including leopards etc.) animal species is being eroded.

What annoys me the most is when greenery gets cleaned off for building liquor vends and ahatas. Who owns them?

Mining and construction, well if was upto them they'll sell or dig every inch of the town.

There's also a factory close to my house that spews black smoke from hay burning. They operate in the night to avoid detection. There has been a case against them in local court filed by RWA, and multiple reports in news papers etc. Still noone can darn shut them down.

Don't know how long will this continue?

Here's another air quality ranking from WHO on PM10 levels.

https://www.statista.com/chart/13814...-in-the-world/

Some info on why PM2.5 are more harmful to humans -

https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/par...tter-pm-basics


Which types of vehicles might be contributing the most? My guess is two and three wheeler vehicles, and old / ill maintained MCVs/HCVs.

A german company has installed an air purifier ("dust eater") at Cubbon Park, Bangalore and after a week, they claim it has purified the air by about 85%

Source:New Indian Express, Bangalore 10 Nov 2018 - Link

I am equally surprised. I expected Ludhiana to be worst one out of Punjab given the poor readings we have been seeing throughout the last year.

On the whole I would say this can be attributed to the lax laws about the emissions in the country. European countries (closest comparison in terms of the population density other than China) brought in tax on cars based on emissions in form of gm of CO2 per km, and India still doesn't have anything like it. And then there are decades old forms of transport that should have been scrapped years ago but they continue to ply at 10 rupees a ride. Industrial pollution is a little better regulated from what i have seen.

Was heading back home from work last night, when I saw what appeared to be fog in the distance. Was pretty surprised because while it was cold (by South India standards ), I haven't seen fog in this part of Bangalore since I was a kid. While riding through it, I realized that it was actually the haze from massive fires from burning leaves and plant waste in the HAL compound! Now I can understand a bit of what Delhi goes through. If that was a daily occurrence during my commute, I would leave the city pronto.

I remember Singapore used to suffer from haze because of crop burning in Indonesia. But they seem to have worked with Indonesia through ASEAN and solved that issue: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapo...esian-minister

So if two countries can work things out, why can't a few states that belong to the same country? We pay a 'cess' for every thing these days, why not a small cess on some item that goes towards mechanizing the fields of Punjab and Harayana so they can clear things up with machines instead of burning? Even if it was just Delhi paying that cess, I'm sure it will be worth it for clear air. (Just one idea, I'm sure there are several better ones.)

Addendum to the previous post (Mods, please merge): Looks like the haze from HAL made the news: https://www.deccanherald.com/city/ha...me-702712.html "HAL, residents play blame game over smoke issue"

"...the HAL officials are claiming that the massive smoke was due to fire from firecrackers spreading to construction debris lying around the premises"

What nonsense! It was clearly leaves burning, I've seen similar smoke from the HAL premises one or two times over the years and on the other occasions when there was smoke it was nowhere close to the Diwali festival month!

India's Air Quality Index. Are we aware of the air quality deterioration ?

Not many are aware of the increasingly deteriorating air quality in India.
I think a better understanding on what Air Quality Index (AQI) stands for will help in understanding the pollution levels and what causes the AQI to raise.

Air Quality Index is a metric used to convey the general public on how the air quality is in your locality.

Health implication of increasing AQI.


Air Quality Index -- Health Implication.

0-50 No Health Implication.

51-100 Some pollutants may slightly affect very few hypersensitive individuals.

101-150 Healthy people may experience slight irritations and sensitive individuals will be slightly affected to a larger extent.

151-200 Sensitive individuals will experience more serious conditions. The hearts and respiratory systems of healthy people may be affected.

201-300 Healthy people will commonly show symptoms. People with respiratory or heart diseases will be significantly affected and will experience reduced endurance in activities.

>300 Healthy people will experience reduced endurance in activities and may also show noticeably strong symptoms. Other illnesses may be triggered in healthy people. Elders and the sick should remain indoors and avoid exercise. Healthy individuals should avoid outdoor activities

Source - Wikipedia.


The AQI measurement is done based on the concentration of 8 different pollutants in air.

Air pollutants PM10, PM2.5 NO2, SO2, CO, O3, NH3, and Pb are used to calculate this metric.

Particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5) - Diesel vehicles are the primary source of particulate pollution in air.

Particulate matter can penetrate into our respiratory system, the smaller the particulate matter the deeper it can penetrate into the respiratory system and get absorbed into our lungs and cause lung diseases.


Nitrogen Oxide (NOX), Lead (PB) & Carbon Monoxide (CO)
Petrol cars and unleaded aviation fuel contribute to these air pollutants in air. (Causes respiratory diseases)


Sulphur dioxide (SO2) - Caused by Generation of electricity from coal. (Causes respiratory diseases)


All these air pollutants together contribute to the decline in air quality.

Just a google search for "Air Quality Index India" will be an eye-opener on how the bad the pollution levels are. Most of the cities have a alarmingly high AQI rate close to the hazardous range.

Populated cities like New York, London etc fair much better and have a much better AQI.

We are running into a environmental catastrophe.

It's about time we look for alternative transportation which runs on renewable energy and it's about time we stop burning coal.

Instead of providing incentives for car/bike manufactures to sell Hybrids we (Indian Government) levy custom duties on these vehicles and bring down the sales.

To give you a perspective, Toyota Prius is sold for $22,000 (15 lakhs) in U.S and $66,000(45 lakhs) in India.

A car which brings down the carbon footprint is priced three folds higher. Shouldn't this be the other way around ?

References :

India's Air Quality Index : https://www.aqi.in/

Predicament of a hybrid car manufacturer. http://www.forbesindia.com/…/toyota-...a-loss…/9962/1

https://indianexpress.com/…/delhi-po...og-what-is-t…/

https://www.quora.com/Is-Delhis-pollution-hyped

India's AQI





New York City

Guess which is the number one city in the world in terms of most unbreathable & polluted air?

It's Delhi, of course. And even after that the next six are Indian cities. In fact, India has the unenviable record of hosting the 13 of the 20 most polluted cities of the world.
Here's a link of the top 500 cities in the world with the highest measures of air pollution.

Turns out, the gap between the petrol and diesel vehicles, in so far as emission is concerned, have considerable narrowed over the last many years of their evolution. The catalytic converters have been doing a phenomenon job and are always improving.

Still, the knowledge on the sources of PM2.5, PM10, and others is still rather incomplete. In India, various studies have been pointing to - dust; unregulated burning of solid and liquid fuels; unregulated combustion of waste and biomass.

Vehicular emission comes more as second-order effect. They are certainly additive and do need to be addressed over the longer run, but if one is pressed into looking for serious solutions to these issues, the place to start are in addressing those bigger contributors. Vehicles have become an easy, soft target mainly for PR and to just advertise to the world that we are indeed "looking into this!" All the while, we are just indulging in childish games over a serious problem.

Our garbage disposal, for instance is a mess - while we take efforts to segregate at the level of individual homes, many times they are eventually mixed together (by either the municipal guys or even the collections at the apartment complex). Put in the landfill and burn them down to release the pollutants in the air. I hear Kolkata is doing very well in regulating this and ensuring proper disposal.

Our poor quality roads continue to be a source of dust and kick up and launch those missiles of PM10 and PM2.5 all over and around.

Most vehicles move about at inefficient gears/speeds burning more fuel for the same distance - reflection of poor infrastructure and how it leads to (extra) pollution.

A thread already exists - https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/stree...ml#post4494229 (India has 14 out of the 15 most polluted cities in the world)

This one should be merged there.

The situation is dire. Here is a snapshot for PM2.5 for 2018. You can go through the whole list here. 15 of the top 20 most polluted cities are in India. 25 cities in the top 50. The numbers are downright scary if you compare them to other developed cities around the world.

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