Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Oct 25: As a result of people disobeying the prohibition and lighting firecrackers on Diwali in numerous areas of the national capital this morning, Delhi’s air quality was deemed “extremely poor.”
Throughout the Diwali night, loud firework bangs that exceeded the allowable decibel levels rendered the air inhospitable. By twilight, people had begun to set off firecrackers, and as the night wore on, the volume of the explosions rose.
The System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) reports that Delhi’s air quality index (AQI) was 323 at 6 am today. In the nearby cities of Gurugram, Noida, and Faridabad as well, the air quality deteriorated to “extremely poor.”
The city’s air quality index (AQI), which was 312 on Monday, was still the lowest in four years and the second-best in seven, according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
Prior to that, the city’s AQI on Diwali in 2018 was 281 points. Last year, the national capital’s AQI was 382, and it was 414 in 2020 and 337 in 2019.
An AQI of 0 to 50 is regarded as “excellent,” 51 to 100 as “acceptable,” 101 to 200 as “moderate,” 201 to 300 as “poor,” 301 to 400 as “extremely poor,” and 401 to 500 as “severe.”
Notably, the production, storage, selling, and setting off of firecrackers for this Diwali had been prohibited by the Delhi government due to the potential health risks and environmental harms.
The government had stated that anyone caught breaking the restriction would be punished and sentenced to six months in jail. Invoking pollution, the Supreme Court declined last week to lift the prohibition on firecrackers in Delhi.
