Emission clouds over Mum lifting

Crediting Better Infrastructure & Stricter Policing, BMC Claims City Is Changing For Better

Mumbai: At a time when Mumbai’s traffic snarls are growing ever longer, a new BMC report claimed that the city’s emissions are dropping.
    The latest environment status report (ESR) said that the city’s vehicular emission load dropped to 383.69 tonnes per day (tpd) this year from last year’s 413.41 tpd. This, despite Mumbai’s car population growing by 5.3% over the same period.
    The report said Mumbai could soon shrug off the dubious tag of being among the most polluted cities in the country if it builds more flyovers, continues to better its public transport, and successfully widens and concretises its roads like Delhi.
    According to an estimate, the vehicular emission load of Mumbai, which usually hovers around 400 tonnes, is still far below Delhi’s 1,046 tonnes. However, Delhi has nearly 45 lakh vehicles, twice the number that Mumbai has.
    BMC officials claimed that the improvement in Mumbai’s air came partly because of the improvement in its public transport system. Out of the of the total 18,06,974 vehicles on city roads today, 1,63,548 are running on CNG and LPG. What has also helped, officials said, is the widening of city’s roads. “Because of concretisation and paver block roads, widening of flyovers, better monitoring and surveillance of signal and traffic management, the traffic is moving smoother and faster. The idling of the vehicles has also decreased, because of which the emission of NO2 could have reduced,’’ the report claimed.
    Aside from vehicular pollution, the report claimed that the overall emissions in the city—from domestic and industrial sources, refuse burning and vehicles—too have come down to 588.57 tpd from 606.28 tpd last year.
    The report said the levels of SO2 and lead in the air have gone down over the year and even the levels of NO2 have fallen, except in Maravli. Further, while the level of suspended particulate matter is 12%-84%, the lead level is in the range of 1%-2%.
    Rakesh Kumar of National Environmental Engineering Research Institute said that one of the major factors for the drop in pollution is the improvement in the quality of fuel. “The average age of a vehicle has also changed as more and more vehicles are being added to the fleet. This is making a marked difference,’’ he said.