Kolkata, The West Bengal Air pollution Alter Board has partnered with Columbia University and a Bengaluru-based mostly judge tank to explore whether or no longer pollution in metropolis industrial areas and rural regions of the disclose characterize related ranges of toxicity, a senior official talked about on Tuesday.
The survey would wait on resolve whether or no longer variations in pollutant composition consequence in differing public health impact, he talked about.
“If toxicity levels differ between urban and rural areas, the health implications will also differ,” the WBPCB official talked about.
He also talked about that Air Quality Index readings would per chance likely now not continuously precisely replicate the poisonous nature of pollution all through areas.
“When the eastern metropolis’ AQI hovers around 200, it may go upto nearly 250 in Durgapur, an industrial hub. At the same time, AQI readings at Jalangi in Murshidabad, a rural monitoring station, can be of the same level.
“This has led us to explore whether or no longer metropolis industrial and rural pollution are equally poisonous,” the official said.
The WBPCB currently operates around 400 pollution monitoring stations across the state, which generate data at 15-minute intervals.
Columbia University, led by Faye McNeill, Principal Investigator of its Clean Air Initiative, is assisting the Board in data calibration, analysis, and policy advisory support.
WBPCB Chairman Kalyan Rudra said it shares pollution data with college and university researchers to help generate policy inputs and suggest additional pollution-control measures.
“There is a must analyse and survey local weather commerce,” he said, flagging rising carbon-dioxide emissions and increasing temperatures over the past three centuries, which altered ecological patterns, resulted in crop losses and possible rise in frequency of cyclones.
Rudra said sustained efforts by the environment department and the WBPCB in recent years caused improvement in the air quality index situation.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
