COVID-19 lockdown: a boon in boosting the air quality of major Indian Metropolitan Cities
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ORIGINAL PAPER
COVID-19 lockdown: a boon in boosting the air quality of major Indian Metropolitan Cities Devendra Singh Rathore . Chirmaie Nagda . Bhavya Singh Shaktawat . Tanushree Kain . Chandrapal Singh Chouhan . Rakeshwar Purohit . Harish . Rama Kanwar Khangarot . Girima Nagda . Lalit Singh Jhala
Received: 4 July 2020 / Accepted: 3 November 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The COVID-19 lockdown has not only helped in combating the community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 but also improved air quality in a very emphatic manner in most of the countries. In India, the first phase of COVID-19 lockdown came into force on March 25, 2020, which was later continued in the next phases. The purpose of this study was to investigate the result of lockdown on air quality of major metropolitan cities—Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Jaipur, and Lucknow— from March 25 to May 3, 2020. For this study, the concentration of six criteria air pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, CO, NO2, SO2, and O3) and air quality index during the COVID-19 lockdown period was compared with the same period of the previous year 2019. The results indicate a substantial improvement in air
D. S. Rathore (&) B. S. Shaktawat T. Kain Department of Environmental Sciences, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, Rajasthan 313001, India e-mail: [email protected] C. Nagda G. Nagda Department of Zoology, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, Rajasthan 313001, India C. S. Chouhan Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Bhupal Nobles’ University, Udaipur, Rajasthan 313001, India
quality with a drastic decrease in the concentration of PM2.5, PM10, CO, and NO2, while there is a moderate reduction in SO2 and O3 concentration. During the lockdown period, the maximum reduction in the concentration of PM2.5, PM10, CO, NO2, SO2, and O3 was observed to be - 49% (Lucknow), - 57% (Delhi), - 75% (Mumbai), - 68% (Kolkata), - 48% (Mumbai), and - 29% (Hyderabad), respectively. The value of the air quality index (AQI) also dwindled significantly during the COVID-19 lockdown period. The maximum decline in AQI was observed – 52% in Bengaluru and Lucknow. The order of AQI was satisfactory [ moderate [ good [ poor and the frequency order of prominent pollutants was O3 [ PM10 [ PM2.5 [ CO [ NO2 [ SO2 during the lockdown period in all the aforementioned metropolitan cities. Harish Department of Botany, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, Rajasthan 313001, India R. K. Khangarot Department of Chemistry, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, Rajasthan 313001, India L. S. Jhala Department of Geography, Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur, Rajasthan 342011, India
R. Purohit Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, Rajasthan 313001, India
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Aerobiologia
Concentraon (μg/m3)
Graphic abstract 250 200 150 100 50 0 PM2.5
PM10 2019
Criteria Air Pollutants 1.5
SO2
O3
250 200
1 Range
Concentraon (mg/m 3)
Air Quality Index
NO2 2020 (Lockdown)
0.5
150 10
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