Delhi’s air quality plunges to ‘severe’ level; haze surrounds city

New Delhi: The pollution levels in Delhi have further worsened and have reached the category of ‘severe’. A haze enclosed the national capital due to the drop of wind speeds over the weekend that reduced the dispersal of pollutants. The visibility was 2,000 meters at Palam around 3:30am, which dropped to around 1,300 meters around 8am.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) data at 8 am showed Anand Vihar recorded an Air Quality Index of 434 and Vivek Vihar 424 (severe). The 24-hour average AQI was 373 (very poor) at 8 am on Monday compared to 382 at 4 pm on Sunday, the highest this winter season, eclipsing the 364 (very poor) on October 23.

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The CPCB classifies AQI between 0-50 as “good,” between 51 and 100 as “satisfactory,” between 101 and 200 as “moderate,” between 201 and 300 as “poor,” between 301 and 400 as “very poor,” and over 400 as “severe.”.

Private forecaster Skymet Weather vice president Mahesh Palawat said on Sunday a spike in pollution was expected, citing changes in direction and almost calm winds. He added the wind direction was expected to switch to south-easterly by Monday. “We can expect wind speeds to be calm overnight and below 10 km per hour during the day until Tuesday.” A slight increase in wind speed was expected from Wednesday onwards.

The “severe” category means to ban all construction and demolition activities in NCR, except for essential projects; it is necessary to ban mining and associated activities.