Rain helps but air quality remains ‘poor’

The air quality in the Capital improved on Saturday, after overnight rain in some parts of Delhi, moving it from ‘very poor’ to ‘poor’ category as the concentation of Particulate matter (PM) decreased.

An official of the India Meteorological Department said the city recorded one mm rainfall in the 24 hours till 8:30 am on Saturday.

The Central Pollution Control Board on Saturday recorded the pollutant particulate matter or PM2.5 at 288 at 10 am on Saturday, as compared to 299 at 7 pm on Friday.

According to the experts, the situation will improve in the coming days.

SAFAR records 24-hour rolling averages of PM10 and PM 2.5, and uses this data to estimate the air quality index (AQI). PM 10 and PM 2.5 are ultra-fine particles, which are the dominant pollutants in Delhi. The acceptable levels of PM10 and PM 2.5 are 100µg/m3 and 60µg/m3 respectively.

The larger particulate matter, measured by PM10, docked at 199 µg/m3 on Saturday morning while PM2.5, which measures very poor and more dangerous particulate matter, hovered around 130 µg/m3.

The Safdarjung observatory recorded 1 mm rainfall.