Kolkata spends 1st fortnight in a suffocating haze

KOLKATA: On 12 out of the last 15 days, air quality index in

Kolkata has remained in the hazardous zone

, exposing citizens to serious health risks including asthma, COPD, cardiac ailments and cancer, say doctors. Since January 8, the city’s PM 2.5 count has remained consistently above 300 and inhaling this air for a period of three-four hours is equivalent to smoking six-eight cigarettes, they said.


On Monday, the PM 2.5 count, according to the

US Consulate

’s station at Ho Chi Minh Sarani, touched 336. It had crossed 400 last Friday which was higher than the count for Delhi the same day. The permissible limit for PM2.5 is 60 µg/m3 and anything in the 301-500 range is ‘hazardous’.

“A consistent count of 350-400 is dangerous. Since PM 2.5 goes straight into the lungs without any resistance, it is difficult to evade. Apart from cough, sneeze and breathlessness — which are the relatively harmless effects of an exposure to PM 2.5 — it can cause COPD, aggravate heart diseases and even lead to cancer in the long run. Since the particulate matter that we inhale is laden with vehicular pollution, it has a high metal content. This makes us vulnerable to lung cancer as well as head and neck cancer,” said Subir Ganguly, oncologist.

Bengal

’s environment minister and mayor Sovon Chatterjee, however, refuses to accept the US Consulate station reading as representative of the air quality of the entire city. “This one-station figure does not reflect the ambient air quality of the entire city. Kolkata fares much better than Delhi. We can prove this at any point of time with facts and data,” Chatterjee said on Monday.

Even though state agencies do not recognise the one-station figure as being representative of the city’s ambient air quality, experts say it certainly indicates the trend, particularly when the state pollution control board has kept its automatic air quality monitoring stations shut.

Foul air could turn fatal for kids, elderly
The reading of the US Consulate monitoring centre on Ho Chi Min Sarani may not be representative of the entire city but is still alarming, feels environmental scientist Sudipta Bhattacharya. “A consistent exposure to this foul air — even for three-four hours a day — can trigger chronic bronchitis, emphysema, respiratory tract infection or COPD,” he said.

For those with low immunity, particularly children and the elderly, any of these could be fatal, according to Debashish Saha, a consultant at

AMRI Hospital

.

“Cardiac patients, those on dialysis and diabetics are at grave risk. A pollution-triggered infection could be fatal for them,” said Saha.

This is, perhaps, the worst January in recent years when the PM2.5 levels have remained at hazardous levels for so many days at a stretch.

Some city-based environmentalists fear that if the pollution count at a sanitized place like the US Consulate is so bad, it could be far worse in places like Behala, Dunlop, Moulali or Dalhousie. According to experts, ‘hazardous’ AQI is six times the tolerable limit for human health and thus warrants emergency measures like closure of schools, control of vehicular population on roads on a war footing and urgent emission-control measures.The majority of the particles that are in PM2.5 are carcinogenic, said Somendra Mohan Ghosh, an auto-emission expert.