Title: Monitoring of air pollution in Indian metropolitan cities: modelling and quality indexing

Authors: P. Chandra Mouli, M. Prveen Kumar, S. Jayarama Reddy, S. Venkata Mohan

Addresses: Electrochemical Research Laboratories, Department of Chemistry, Sri Venkateswara University, India. ' Electrochemical Research Laboratories, Department of Chemistry, Sri Venkateswara University, India. ' Electrochemical Research Laboratories, Department of Chemistry, Sri Venkateswara University, India. ' Biochemical and Environmental Engineering Centre, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology

Abstract: Air quality in cities is the result of a complex interaction between natural and anthropogenic environmental conditions. Delhi, as well as many other cities in India, is facing problems concerning air pollution. The increase in industrialisation and the vehicle fleet, poor control on emissions and little use of catalytic converters, produce a great amount of particulate and toxic gases. Data on air pollutants and meteorological variables were collected in the metropolitan cities Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai for the period July–August, 2001. Data were treated with the bivariate regression model to explore the influence of the meteorological variables on air pollutant concentrations, and were also used to compute an Air Quality Index, using the weighted arithmetic mean method. The proposed index seems to be applicable in the assessment of overall air quality with respect to air pollutants.

Keywords: air pollutants; air quality index; India; meteorological variables; simple linear regression; air pollution monitoring.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2004.005114

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2004 Vol.21 No.4, pp.365 - 382

Published online: 03 Sep 2004 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article