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In a new set of directions to prevent further deterioration of air quality in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR), the Centre’s air quality panel on Friday ordered shutting of educational institutions, allowing only online mode of education.

In a new set of directions to prevent further deterioration of air quality in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR), the Centre’s air quality panel on Friday ordered shutting of educational institutions, allowing only online mode of education.

The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) also directed that industrial operations and processes in NCR, not running on Piped Natural Gas or other cleaner fuels, shall be allowed to operate only up to eight hours a day from Monday to Friday and shall not be allowed to run on weekends.

“All schools, colleges and educational institutions in the NCR shall remain closed, allowing only online mode of education, except for the purpose of conduct of examinations and laboratory practical,” the commission said.

It also said its earlier directions on industries shall continue. According to these directions, all industries in NCR, still using unapproved fuels, shall be closed by the respective governments with immediate effect. Also the NCR states and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) shall enforce a strict ban on use of diesel generators, except for emergency services.

In its new directions, the commission also stopped the entry of trucks in Delhi, except the electric ones and those running on Compressed Natural Gas, besides trucks carrying essential commodities.

The commission directed that the chief secretaries of the respective states and the Delhi government shall ensure implementation of these directions.

“Strict enforcement of these directions as also the directions/orders issued by the commission from time to time since its inception shall be ensured by the respective agencies and implementation, compliance of the same shall be monitored by the chief secretaries of the respective state/GNCTD,” the commission’s order stated.

“In view of the compelling need to prevent further deterioration of environment and towards improvement of air quality in Delhi and NCR, the commission, in exercise of its powers conferred upon it (by)… the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Act 2021, directs that these measures shall be implemented with strict force with immediate effect, until further orders,” it read.

The CAQM, an executive body set up by the Ministry of Environment earlier this year to oversee measures to curb air pollution in the NCR, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, also constituted task forces for each of these states to implement, enforce, monitor and report compliance status of its orders. 

Air quality panel for Delhi issues new orders; edu institutions to be shut | Education – Hindustan Times

As coronavirus cases popped up across California in March 2020, the previously impossible happened in Los Angeles County: The region’s normally bumper-to-bumper traffic slowed by roughly 24%. Lucky drivers were now, suddenly, able to make it from Burbank to Santa Monica at rush hour on the 101 and 405 in less than 50 minutes.

A team of scientists led by CU Boulder are using the once-in-a-lifetime event to answer an unusual question: How much do vehicles in a city like Los Angeles add to the ammonia emissions that can hang in the air and sicken residents?

The group’s findings, published Nov. 23 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, may spell bad news for a region that loves its cars. Ammonia is a common pollutant that can react to form small particles in the air that are a major cause of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, especially in densely populated areas. The researchers show that city vehicles may spew a lot more of these molecules than state and federal agencies have believed.

The study is the first to explore how vehicles churn out ammonia across an entire urban center using satellites in space.

“The tricky question has always been: How do we separate out ammonia concentrations owing to traffic from the ammonia emitted from sources like agriculture?” said Daven Henze, a co-author of the new study and professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder. “Then the COVID lockdown suddenly provided us with a natural experiment.”

In other words, the pandemic gave the researchers an accidental before and after picture—with a smoggy, car-filled Los Angeles on one side and a clearer, relatively empty urban area on the other.

Henze and his colleagues took advantage of that situation by drawing on satellite images to track the ammonia concentrations in the air above Los Angeles before and during the lockdown of March 2020. The team discovered that cars may churn out as much as 95% of this harmful pollutant throughout the city at any one time.

“Our estimates for vehicle ammonia emissions are higher than federal and state inventories by a factor of two to five,” said Hansen Cao, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at CU Boulder.

Hidden chemical danger

The research sheds light on what may be an underappreciated pollutant: Molecules of ammonia, the odor you detect when you pass a smelly farm.

Henze explained that scientists have long known that agricultural operations, from corn fields to chicken farms, churn out huge amounts of this chemical. Once in the air, ammonia can mix with nitrogen oxides to form what researchers call “fine particulate matter.”

“Those emissions come from, to put it politely, the downstream processes,” Henze said. “The feedlots, poultry and swine manure—they all give off a lot of ammonia.”

There’s another source of that pollution, too: Your car’s tailpipe. Estimates suggest that ammonia emissions from vehicles can lead to roughly 15,000 premature deaths across the United States every year. Recent research has also hinted that those numbers may miss the real toll of urban pollution. 

Ammonia hotspots

Henze and his colleagues tapped data from two satellites, the United States’ Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership and Europe’s Sentinel-5 Precursor to further explore the ammonia question.

In early March 2020, the team spotted two clear hotspots for ammonia in the Los Angeles region—one above downtown L.A. and one just north of Riverside, California, a hub for livestock and agriculture. By the end of the month, the hotspot over downtown had all but disappeared as traffic petered out.

“I think we were almost surprised that we could see the downtown hotspot and the impact of the pandemic,” Henze said. “We weren’t just taking measurements at one road. We were looking at the entire urban area from space.”

That ultimate bird’s eye view paid off. The team calculated that vehicles produce at least 60% of the ammonia emissions in urban Los Angeles. Estimates from state and national regulators, in contrast, had pegged those numbers at less than 25%. Next, Cao said she and her colleagues want to apply the same techniques to explore the effects of the pandemic on the air above other cities.

The results could underscore the importance of regulating cars and their engines so that they churn out less of this dangerous pollutant, she said. 

“Vehicles can be the dominant sources of ammonia emissions over urban areas,” she said. “If we’re underestimating those emissions, then previous estimates of premature deaths owing to ammonia emissions might also be underestimated.”

As LA traffic slowed amid the pandemic, resea | EurekAlert!

Officials hope three-day weekend will help reduce toxic pollution levels in country’s second largest city

Pakistan has ordered private offices and schools to remain closed on Mondays in Lahore in the hope that a three-day weekend will help reduce toxic levels of smog in the country’s second-largest city.

The directive, issued by Punjab relief commissioner Babar Hayat Tarar, aimed to act “as a preventive and speedy remedy” during the winter smog season and will last until 15 January.

Lahore was temporarily declared the most polluted city in the world by an air quality monitor earlier on Wednesday, as residents complain of shortness of breath, stinging eyes and nausea from thick, acrid pollution.

Last week, the air quality index in the city of about 12 million people was ranked at 348, much above the hazardous level of 300, according to IQAir, the Swiss technology company that operates the AirVisual monitoring platform. Since then, Lahore has been overtaken by Delhi, India, which ranked at 422. The number is a calculation based on the level of several pollutants in the air.

Pakistan has witnessed the worst air pollution in recent years from Karachi to Lahore, as a mixture of low-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal crop burn off, and colder winter temperatures coalesce into stagnant clouds of smog.

As air pollution got worse and the city felt unliveable, the desperate residents filed petitions in the courts in Lahore against the government to take action against the smog, which is a mix of smoke and fog.

Abubaker Umer, a communication specialist and a resident in Lahore, said he stopped going for morning walks and sent his elderly parents to another town as they were very sensitive to air pollution. Umer says his skin allergy and throat irritation has gotten worse over a few weeks since the city has been engulfed in the smog.

“When you open the window or step outside you see no sky. Smog is everywhere,” he said. “We are inhaling smog and toxic air pollution has become part of our lives and bodies. The government has to do more than closing educational institutes as Lahore has become an unlivable city.”

He said that he is able to work from home but over a million people do not have this privilege. He added: “People don’t even wear masks and they don’t know how deadly the weather is. They lack awareness but this is the responsibility of the government to share awareness and find solutions.”

Dr Aamir Iqbal, a private doctor who practises pulmonary medicine in Lahore has seen the symptoms of his patients getting worse. “The smog is making it very hard for the people to breathe and having issues in the throat, irritation in eyes and the weather is very dangerous for people who have lung issues and some other diseases. I have instructed some of my patients not to go out.”

On average, Pakistanis are estimated to lose two years of their life due to air pollution. But Lahore suffers the worst, with the average resident losing 5.3 years of their lives, claims the report on air quality life index , produced by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

The information minister, Fawad Chaudhry, has blamed previous authorities for smog in Lahore. “We see Lahore engulfed by fog every winter due to the past rulers of the city, who had cut trees for erecting a jungle of concrete there which badly affected the green cover of Lahore and its surroundings,” he said on Saturday.

Rimmel Mohydin, a south Asia analyst at Amnesty International, said the smog crisis was a human rights issue, given that it impedes the right to health. “People should not be endangered by the air they breathe. If the expertise is available, if the consequences are dire, if the evidence of the damage is mounting, then the government must not waste time initiating smog protection protocol.”

Malik Amin Aslam, climate change adviser to the prime minister, Imran Khan, said the government was working on the recommendations of the smog action committee. “We are doing everything possible,” he said.

Aslam said that without regional efforts between India and Pakistan the issue of the smog cannot be tackled, as the crops are burned off on the other side of the border. “We have put this request for a dialogue between regional countries during Cop26 (climate summit). Hopefully, it will take place.”

However, Rafay Alam, a lawyer and environmental activist said that while there was a need for dialogue with India and regional countries, the smog cannot be blamed on Pakistan’s neighbours.

“There is no overnight solution to the problem. The government has to improve fuel quality and shift to renewable energy, and provide pollution control devices for the industries..”

Pakistan orders Monday closure of schools and offices in Lahore to cut smog | Pakistan | The Guardian