Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Bad English or Bad Science?

In the domestic LPG was blamed for air pollution in the growing cities of Delhi and Pune. Today, I saw this note from the Press Information Bureau of India, on the recently released report by MoEF and CPCB on air pollution in six cities in India.

Link to the article (on March 1st, 2011)

The Central Government has undertaken a study, i.e., ‘Air Quality Monitoring, Emission Inventory and Source Apportionment Study for (six) Indian Cities’, namely, Delhi, Kanpur, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru with the help of premier institutions like, IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Madras, NEERI-Nagpur, TERI-New Delhi and ARAI-Pune for identifying the various mobile and stationary sources of dust and the extent of their contribution to ambient air pollution. The study was coordinated by the Central Pollution Control Board. The main focus of study was on PM10 (particulate matter less than 10 micron) in ambient air. International peer review has been done for this study.

Vehicular emission is one of the identified sources of dust. Based on the study conducted, the approximate contribution of transport sector to dust in residential areas varies between 9.8 to 48.3 percent in the cities. Re-suspension of road dust due to movement of vehicles is also a prominent source. Based on limited measurements, contribution to PM2.5 (fine dust particles having size less than 2.5 micron) in ambient air was about 40 to 60 percent from LPG combustion and 6 to 22 percent from vehicles, including diesel vehicles in Delhi. The report does not mention that diesel vehicles and LPG vehicles cause seven percent and 51 percent pollution, respectively in Delhi.

The various actions being taken to check pollution include, notification of environmental standards for various categories of industry/process, introduction of cleaner fuel as per Auto Fuel Policy for controlling vehicular pollution, enforcement of ‘Pollution Under Control (PUC)’ certificate system to check exhaust emission from in-use vehicles, implementation of stringent emission norms for generator sets, use of beneficiated / blended coal in coal based thermal power plants, metro network in cities, monitoring of air polluting industries for compliance of notified standards, etc.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Environment and Forests (independent charge) Shri Jairam Ramesh in a written reply to a question by Shri Upendra Kushwaha in Rajya Sabha today.


What does it mean, "report does not mention".. if the report does not mention, where is the press information bureau getting this information?

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