FRONT PAGE | Sunday, November 8, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Surprise smog hits Delhi early
Parvaiz Sultan | New Delhi
The thick blanket of smog over the national Capital on Saturday morning led to five casualties and injuries to students going to school. The sudden and unexpected change in weather conditions with rapid dip in visibility affected rail and road traffic in Delhi and NCR. However, there was no disruption in flight operations. Besides affecting the commuters in general, the smog was problematic for citizens with complaints of burning of eyes, respiratory problems for asthma patients and several respiratory ailment complaints. The schoolchildren had horrifying time during the day, especially in the morning when they were off to their schools.
The smog observed on Saturday, like the pre-CNG days era, has also been attributed to dust and soot from the ongoing infrastructure and building works related to Commonwealth Games in the Capital, which remain suspended in the atmosphere for prolonged hours. Attributing the foggy weather to the approaching dry wind from western India, IMD Director RC Vashisht said, “Western disturbance over north Pakistan area has resulted in moisture in northwest India. Moreover, there is a cooling effect since winters are approaching”.
According to the weatherman, smog is experienced during the onset of winter and similar conditions may prevail for the next few days.
There was less traffic on the roads due to thick blanket of smog on Saturday morning.
While there has already been a spurt in the deadly dengue cases with temperature playing truant giving favourable conditions to aedes Egyptei and culex malarial mosquitoes, the pollutants and suspended particles in the atmosphere had another cautionary word of advice from the medicos. The air becomes stiller and murky because dust and pollutants are no longer lifted from the surface. "Whenever there is rapid change in humidity or temperature, it means sudden fall in temperature of 10 degrees or more, which affects humans. Therefore, it is suggested we should avoid moving out as these conditions are really dangerous for asthmatics or people having respiratory ailments. If we are itching or irritation in our eyes, we should keep washing our eyes with rose water, plain water, etc," said leading physician Dr KK Agarwal, who is also president of Heart Care Foundation of India.
The Centre for Science and Environment's (CSE) analysis of Saturday's unprecedented smog suggested that Delhi has lost the gains of its CNG programme. According to the analysis, in 2001, when the CNG programme was on, the annual average level of respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM, or PM10) in residential areas stood at 149 microgram per cubic metre. After registering a drop in 2005, the level has shot up to 209 microgram per cubic metre in 2008. The concentration is, thus, around three times higher than the safe levels. The most worrying trend is a decreasing ridership of Delhi's buses - according to a 2008 study done by RITES, between 2001 to 2007-08, the bus share in the model split has fallen from 60 per cent to 41 per cent.
Visibility in the national Capital dropped to 500 metres in the morning after a thick layer of fog kept hanging over the city for the first time this winter. According to the IMD official, "When the atmosphere cools, an unstable condition is created which allows pollutants to more easily disperse. And because of this inversion, people may face irritation in eyes or itching. They may also have some breathing problem".
Though the weather was fairly warm in the day, the fog remained till the evening. Despite the poor visibility, airline schedules were not hit, said Anirudh Chatterjee, IGIA spokesperson. The minimum temperature recorded at around 8.30 am was 15.5 degree Celsius, a notch above the average for this time of the year. The maximum is expected to hover around the past average of 29 degrees Celsius.
According to the IMD official, the impulsive change in the atmosphere is due to the approaching western disturbance towards northern part of the country. "WD caused increase in moisture, which resulted in inversion in lower level of the atmosphere. Depositing of soot and dust over water particles also caused decrease in visibility up to 500 meteres and below in many parts of the city and its neighbouring areas like Gurgaon and Faridabad in Haryana as well as in Ghaziabad and Noida", he said.
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