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The air quality index (AQI) in several cities in northern India stayed severe on Sunday morning. Of the 10 cities with the worst air quality at 11 am, five were in Haryana, and four were in Uttar Pradesh. The national capital, Delhi, recorded one of its worst air quality days so far, with the AQI reaching a level of 463, data from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) showed.
An AQI of over 400 is said to be “severe”, and according to the CPCB, can affect healthy people as well, while seriously impacting those with existing diseases.
For several days leading up to this, Delhi’s air quality had consistently languished in the ‘very poor’ category, before turning severe (AQI above 400) on Friday, 3 November, for the first time this season. Kaithal in Haryana recorded the worst AQI in the country on Sunday morning, at 470.
The number of stubble-burning incidents, a key factor behind the pollution at this time of the year, peaked on 1 November in Punjab (1,921), before declining to 1,668 and 1,551 on the next two days. Haryana and Uttar Pradesh recorded 28 and 36 such incidents on 3 November, the latest date for which the data is available.
The sharp increase in stubble-burning incidents after 28 October has been instrumental in the worsening of the air quality in the region.
The Mint AQI tracker relies on the data released every hour by the CPCB, which in turn uses the data collected from several monitoring stations across the country. The AQI for a city is the average of the figure recorded at all stations in that city.
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