Kolkata, Dec 16 || After Kolkata’s air pollution level surged past that of Delhi for the past seven days in a row, environmentalists have called for a wider network of automatic air quality monitoring stations in the densely populated and traffic-heavy areas to capture a more accurate picture of the city’s air quality.
Green technologist and environmentalist Somendra Mohan Ghosh said that Kolkata needed at least 20 automatic air quality monitoring stations across the metropolitan area to obtain reliable, real-time data.
“The seven automatic air quality monitoring stations that we have here were not set up in proper places. We need such stations in densely populated areas and highly congested places such as Moulali and Shyambazar. In the absence of automatic stations, manual machines are used to get data from these areas. But we need automatic stations so that real-time data is received. This will give us the real picture of the city’s air quality,” Ghosh said.
According to him, most of the existing automatic stations are located in the eco-sensitive zones, which often fail to reflect the actual air quality experienced by residents in crowded areas.