Chennai residents celebrate the festival of lights, Deepavali, with fireworks and bursting of crackers across the city, filling the streets with thick smoke. Vehicles are seen navigating through the smoke-covered roads as reduced visibility and deteriorating air quality add to the festive atmosphere in Chennai on Sunday.
An AQI between 200 and 300 is deemed poor, causing breathing discomfort even to healthy people, according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). The maximum cap on 500 must be removed,” said G Sundarrajan, environmentalist, Poovulagin Nanbargal. A senior TNPCB official said the govt monitors were capped at 500 when they were set up around six years ago. “CPCB then thought an AQI of more than 500 would be rare in the city. Meanwhile, engineers and environmentalists have ruled out an AQI of more than 1,000 in the city.
We will also update the maintenance contract,” the official said. “Since there was rain during cracker-bursting, the sensors would have picked up some ‘humidity’ components as pollutants,” said Shiv Nagendra, a professor at IIT Madras. “Govt-run monitors are ideally the best bet, but the ones we have now are not adequate. They must be calibrated, and more areas must be monitored. Environment minister V K Rajeev did not respond to texts and calls. The machines will have to be recalibrated. The NABL (National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories) deals with the calibration process.