Comparative study on air quality status in Indian and Chinese cities before and during the COVID-19 lockdown period
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Comparative study on air quality status in Indian and Chinese cities before and during the COVID-19 lockdown period Aviral Agarwal 1 & Aman Kaushik 1 & Sankalp Kumar 1 & Rajeev Kumar Mishra 1 Received: 26 May 2020 / Accepted: 15 July 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Amidst COVID-19 pandemic, extreme steps have been taken by countries globally. Lockdown enforcement has emerged as one of the mitigating measures to reduce the community spread of the virus. With a reduction in major anthropogenic activities, a visible improvement in air quality has been recorded in urban centres. Hazardous air quality in countries like India and China leads to high mortality rates from cardiovascular diseases. The present article deals with 6 megacities in India and 6 cities in Hubei province, China, where strict lockdown measures were imposed. The real-time concentration of PM2.5 and NO2 were recorded at different monitoring stations in the cities for 3 months, i.e. January, February, and March for China and February, March, and April for India. The concentration data is converted into AQI according to US EPA parameters and the monthly and weekly averages are calculated for all the cities. Cities in China and India after 1 week of lockdown recorded an average drop in AQIPM2.5 and AQINO2 of 11.32% and 48.61% and 20.21% and 59.26%, respectively. The results indicate that the drop in AQINO2 was instantaneous as compared with the gradual drop in AQIPM2.5. The lockdown in China and India led to a final drop in AQIPM2.5 of 45.25% and 64.65% and in AQINO2 of 37.42% and 65.80%, respectively. This study will assist the policymakers in devising a pathway to curb down air pollutant concentration in various urban cities by utilising the benchmark levels of air pollution. Keywords Air quality index . China . COVID 19 . India . NO2 . PM2.5
Introduction In the present time, with the emergence of rapid globalisation and urbanisation, megacities in developing nations are facing severe health issues due to ambient air pollution. According to WHO (World Health Organization), seven million people die each year because of exposure to polluted air (UN Environment Programme 2018). Numerous epidemiological studies in the past two decades have highlighted outdoor air
* Rajeev Kumar Mishra [email protected] Aviral Agarwal [email protected] Aman Kaushik [email protected] Sankalp Kumar [email protected] 1
Department of Environmental Engineering, Delhi Technological University, Delhi 110042, India
pollution as a cause of various respiratory diseases such as asthma, premature deaths and cardiovascular diseases. These have been identified as primary causes of mortality. In such cases, the population living in the vicinity of major roadways in metropolitan cities suffers the most (Park et al. 2020). In urban areas, 80% of people live in concentrations exceeding the WHO limits (Błaszczyk et al. 2017). Motor-vehicle emitted compounds in urban areas which include carbon monoxide (CO); nitrogen oxides (NOx); coarse (PM10), fin
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