In May, the World Health Organisation said Delhi was the sixth-most polluted city in the country
That time of year when Delhi makes the news for its severely polluted air is back with a vengeance. On November 8, the day after Diwali, pollution in the city reached the “severe-plus emergency” category because of the widespread use of firecrackers. And while people in Delhi can testify to just how bad it gets, what’s even more surprising is that there are five other Indian cities that fare even worse when it comes to PM 2.5 levels.
PM 10 refers to particulate matter with a diameter below 10 μm; PM 2.5 refers to that with a diameter below 2.5 μm. PM 2.5 is generally considered more harmful since its smaller size enables it to enter the lungs and cause more damage than larger particles can.|Delhi Air Pollution
According to a report released by the World Health Organisation in May this year, Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanasi, [BS]Gaya and Patna are even more polluted than Delhi. In the list of the 15 most polluted cities in the world, 14 are in India. Almost all of them lie in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Bihar.
While Kanpur ranked at one in the WHO’s list, a Reuters report pointed out that the city has a hard time tracking air quality. “Every week a lung cancer patient walks in; earlier we would get one in three months,” Prem Singh, head of the department of medicine in Kanpur’s Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi Memorial Medical College, told Reuters.|Business Standard
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