If you have had trouble breathing in the past few weeks, perhaps it is not just your poor health you should blame. An analysis of the Air Quality Index (AQI) for Ahmedabad has shown that since the beginning of 2018, the highest number of poor air quality days has been recorded in the month of October (up to Oct 24). Of the 24 days of October, 15 days had poor air quality. This means over 60% of the days in October had poor air quality.

The air quality is deemed poor when the average score of AQI is 201- 300. When the air quality is poor it often leads to breathing discomfort for many. October also had two days when the air quality was very poor. Very poor air quality refers to when the average AQI score is between 301 and 400.

This means that of the 24 days of October, 17 days saw Ahmedabad having either poor or very poor air quality, which is 70% of the days of the month. The rest of the days had moderate air quality. The pollutant that was almost always responsible for worsening the air quality in the city was PM2.5

Prolonged exposure to very poor quality air leads to respiratory illness.

The only silver lining for October, and in fact the whole of 2018, for Ahmedabad, is that as per the AQI data, the city has not witnessed any days with severe air quality. A city is categorised as having severe air quality when it records an average AQI score between 400 and 500. However, in what is a reflection of the poor air quality in Ahmedabad, not even once did the city register a score that could put it in the good air quality category.

In fact, the most breathable month of 2018 was August which had 23 satisfactory air quality days while February had the highest number of very poor air quality days (4).

Environment consultant Rakesh Shah said that it was to be expected. "This is because of a process called inversion," said Shah. "The pollutants instead of being able to go up in the atmosphere remain at the lower level and as a result, their concentration is higher. When the temperature rises, the air can rise easily too and with it, carry the pollutants. But when the temperature dips, as it happens during winter, this does not happen, leading to more poor air quality days."

However, not everyone blames the weather for the rise in poor air quality. "One major factor is the construction of metro rail that has gathered pace," said Mahesh Pandya, whose organisation has filed a PIL in the high court regarding the matter. "Due to the metro work, there is a lot of dust particles in the air. Moreover, the roads have narrowed because of the construction work and so, vehicles are spending more time on the road. This also adds to the pollution level. The overall poor condition of roads also means that the dust pollution increases rising PM levels."

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