Srinagar: In September 2017, the Jammu and Kashmir high court came down heavily on the state government for deteriorating air quality in Srinagar, the summer capital, and sought an action plan from different stakeholder agencies to mitigate it.
“We will be left with no choice but to issue contempt if the directions are not followed,” the court pronounced, after an official report revealed that PM2.5 levels recorded in different places in the city had breached the permissible limit ceiling of 60 µg/m³.
Though little is known about follow-up actions on the government’s part, a study by the WHO about the most polluted cities in the world should set alarm bells ringing.
It placed Srinagar, one of the most favoured tourist destinations in the country, at no. 10 in a list of the 15 most polluted cities, highlighting how years of neglect have wrecked havoc.
Government denial
According to the study, which was released by the WHO in Geneva on May 1, the average PM2.5 level across the city was about 113 µg/m³ between 2010 and 2016. Even as the local media reported this number, the State Pollution Control Board (SPCB), tasked with monitoring air quality in the city, slipped into damage control mode and issued a detailed rebuttal on May 5, challenging the findings on two fronts.
Quoting from the report, Syed Nadeem Hussain, the director of the SPCB, said the primary data on which the WHO had based its report had been sourced from the “respective (state) governments”. However, he continued, “no data was forwarded to WHO by the PCB, which is the sole body responsible for monitoring pollution.”
Second: He said the SPCB had started monitoring PM2.5 levels from July 2017 only, whereas the WHO’s study period appeared to be from 2010 to 2016.
“Wherefrom did they get the data when infrastructure for monitoring it wasn’t available,” the director asked, insisting that the PM2.5 level in the city was within the permissible limits.
The SPCB currently has five air-quality monitoring stations around Srinagar, where, according to its officials, data is collected twice a week.
However, in an email response to The Wire, Maria Neira, the director of the department of public health, and the environmental and social determinants of health, at the WHO, said the data for Srinagar hadn’t come from the SPCB but from the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), an initiative of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune.
“We wish to reiterate that the WHO has brought together information on outdoor air pollution collected in (4,300) cities worldwide in order to raise awareness and facilitate adequate response to protect public health from adverse impacts of air pollution,” Neira said.
A different source of data
Even as the SPCB continues to deny the study’s conclusions, Bilquees Ara Siddique, the air-quality monitoring head at the agency, said the denial issued by the director against the WHO report was his “personal opinion” and in absence of any detailed study to back the claims.
“Where is any detailed air-quality monitoring study to back the assertion that Srinagar air is safe? We don’t have any data to counter the WHO study.”
Going a step ahead, Shakil Ramshoo, the head of the earth sciences department at the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, termed the WHO findings “factually correct”.
“The refusal to acknowledge and confront the problem will keep us trapped in it forever,” he said. “The finding is real and based on factual information. Fear of bad name shouldn’t worry or frustrate us much but instead motivate us to find ways to address the problem.”
Ramshoo who has been studying the Himalayan ecology and weather patterns, said his department had set up a continuous air-quality monitoring system in their campus in 2012, to measures air quality at five-minute intervals. This system checks the PM2.5, PM10, ozone, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, NOx, sulphur dioxide and methane levels.
According to Ramshoo, this data is fed realtime into the national grid. “And it is this data which the WHO has used for Srinagar.”
He also questioned the SPCB for using an “archaic system” and “obsolete technology” (using filter papers) to monitor air quality.
Exacerbated by silt
Before the WHO rankings were published, a study by the IITM and the University of Kashmir had found that pollution in Srinagar went five-times beyond the permissible limit during winter. For example, according to the study, the PM2.5 level would touch 348 μg/m³.
It concluded that the culprits were burning of coal and firewood and vehicular combustion.
With a population of around 1.2 million (Census 2011), Srinagar burns more than one lakh tonnes of coal annually for domestic purposes. About 5,253 tonnes and 123.4 tonnes are burned in bakeries and hamams, respectively, especially during winter. Similarly: By the end of 2017, 341,000 vehicles had been registered in the city (according to the Road Transport Office).
A senior official at India Meteorological Department’s Srinagar station said the devastating flood in 2014 had deposited many tonnes of silt in the city. “Over a period of time, this slit from city roads and open spaces has been mixing with air in the form of dust, polluting the atmosphere,” the official said.
Khursheed Ahmad Ganai, the state’s chief information commissioner, wrote in an article in Ziraat Times, “If the methodology followed in the [WHO] study is error free, then the result is not only a matter of worry for residents of Srinagar but also a matter of shame because it shows what its residents (including me for over two decades now) have done to this most beautiful city.”
Mudasir Ahmad is a Srinagar-based reporter.