Air Quality Report on Mumbai, India

Mumbai, the India’s largest city and the biggest international trade hub has been severly affected by a worlwide problem know as POLLUTION. The problem of pollution is severe in Mumbai because of the geography of the city, hill ranges of Ghatkopar Hills in the north-east of the city and Arabian Sea in the east and south, as well as the narrow road constrution through out the city. As this city is one of the metropolitician cities, it has huge industrial sector in south of the city which includes Oil Refineries, Pharmasuetical, Textile and Automobile industries. Along with that, the same area has the highest number of Customers Service Call Centers.

All the pollution which is produced through the industries, reamins trapped in the city for longer period because of the humid & dense sea breezes and hill ranges which has raised the city’s pollution to alarming level.  The BOD (Biological Oxygen Demand) has been incread by five times to 640 mg/lt in the years 2007 – 2009. 

The city Road Construction is also one of the main reasons behind the city pollution, as the width of the roads in the city is not wide enough for the smooth traffic passage, which leads to slow traffic movement and highly excess formation of pollutants like CO2, CO, NO and SO3.  And mumbai has also the India’s highest city population and nearly 88% of the commuters use public transport like bus, auto rickshaw, trains, etc. But there are only 1500 eco-friendly buses in the whole city. Still most of the transportation means are petrol or diesel based which produces a lot of smoke in the city and causes pollution.

The air quality on the outskirts of Mumbai is way better as compared to the incity air quality as the air is refreshed regualrly by the sea brezzes and is not holded back by any hill range. The air qaulity in the communities which are 300 km away from Mumbai has been controlled by the city authorities with the serious steps like eco-friendly transportation, Electric subways and removal of the slum areas.

The government bodies in Mumbai has started taking the serious steps to improve the air quality by increasing the number of Eco-friendly transits and introduction of monorail in the city as well as improving the city’s major highway.

But in order to improve the city air quality government gets limited by the number of eco-friendly private public transit and the development of the huge slum areas to improve the current highways or make new one as the city Mumbai follows the simple and direct relation of pollution and poppulation.

refrences:

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=202552

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/993395.cms

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