Nagpur: With lockdown in place, this year summers are comparatively lower on exuding scorching heat in Nagpur, thanks to the very low pollution resulting from less number of vehicles plying on roads. As the ongoing summer season is in its final leg, the heat effect has however increased but its pinch doesn’t feel too much.
The ongoing lockdown which has been in place since March 24 has one hand brought the vehicular traffic to standstill it has also reduced the emission levels resulting in low pollutants and concentration of particulated matter in the city’s air. This has certainly led to less heat compared to last year.
Speaking with Nagpur Today Kaustav Chatterjee, founder of Green Vigil Foundation viewed that the lockdown norms have helped the environment to tackle pollution problems in the city. During the pandemic, pollution had plummeted to an extent throughout the city that April 2020 has registered lowest pollution level in the city compared to all the months of April from 2002, contended,
Citing the factors contributing to low pollution level, he said, industrial shut down, restricted vehicular movement and negligible construction activities has brought down the pollution.
Further, Chatterjee informed, the air quality index in the city is measured based on 12 parameters. The main components of air pollution are the PM 2.5 and PM 10 particles that are present in the air. While PM 2.5 is more dangerous as it directly enters our blood. This particulate matter mainly originates from industries and as Nagpur is a developing city, where the construction activities are mainly on run releasing particulate matter continuously in the air. But due to lockdown, the industries and the construction have come to halt decreasing the level of particulate matter in air and thereby, the pollution.
In India, there are 102 non-attainment cities (the cities where the pollution level is usually high), out of which 17 cities are from Maharashtra and one of them is Nagpur. But due to lockdown, the city has managed to reduce the pollution problems in large.
Chatterjee said to prevent this problem further, there is a need to bring some changes in our day to day life. Because of lockdown, we go out to bring essentials in an amount and the same thing we have to carry forward in our life which will recoup us from using more vehicles. The wastage of cooked food has reduced and thereby, somewhere we have helped in saving the water too. These small things could be useful to us in the long run and will help to make our city pollution-free.
