Varanasi: City gets its 1st air quality monitoring station

Posted by mcpatdu on 7 Feb 2011 Link (URL): http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/City-gets-its-1st-air-quality-monitoringstation/articleshow/7413431.cms Date: Wed, 2011-02-02 VARANASI: The city got its first air quality monitoring station (AQMS) under the National Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Programme ( NAAQP) on Wednesday. Chairman, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), S P Gautam inaugurated the station at pollution testing laboratory, Saket Nagar, in the city. The AQMS has been set up to begin regular monitoring of the air quality in Varanasi under the expert guidance of B D Tripathi, coordinator of Centre for Environmental Science and Technology, Banaras Hindu University (BHU). Tripathi is also a member of the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA). Tripathi said that the station is equipped with instruments like high volume sampler and respirable dust sampler, which would enable round-the-clock monitoring of ambient air quality as per the guidelines under NAQMP. The station would take stock of different air pollutants like sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, total suspended particulate matter (SPM), respirable suspended particulate matter and ozone gas. The samples of various air pollutants absorbed in different absorbents would be collected and analysed on a regular basis. The report would be submitted to CPCB and UP Pollution Control Board regularly, he added. It is also worth mentioning that the start of AQMS marks the beginning of first such station in a residential area in the city. Two such stations in different areas - BHU (silence zone) and Chandpur industrial area (industrial zone) are also proposed to be set up under the programme. Box item: How does the in-situ bio-remediation works? The technology works on the principle of decentralised treatment technique to control pollution generated from running batteries of drains that discharge polluted water directly into the water bodies or rivers. A number of checkpoints are created along the small drains, where activities of bacteriophage (microbes that kill harmful bacteria) and enzymes are induced to reduce the total faecal coli and E coli count before the water is taken to sewage treatment plants (STPs). The cost-effective and eco-friendly technology helps in reducing the hydraulic load on STPs and improves the water quality that is discharged into the river.

Presently, the method is being tried at four

projects under National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) in Indore and Bharatpur in the country