Air quality continues to remain hazardous in Lahore

LAHORE: City’s Raiwind Road remained the worst with regard to the air quality on Monday, ARY News reported.

Lahore continues to remain the most polluted city in the country according to the details released by the provincial environment department.

According to details shared by the Punjab Environment Protection Department, the air quality of Lahore’s Raiwind Road remained worst with 303 reading on the Air Quality Index (AQI), followed by 268, 212 and 204 AQI recorded at National Hockey Stadium, Township Sector-II and Town Hall respectively.

It further shared that AQI reading recorded 96 in Faisalabad, 121 at Rahim Yar Khan, and 117 in Rawalpindi.

The AQI is calculated on the basis of five categories of pollution: ground-level ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide.

AQI as high as 151-200 is considered unhealthy, while an AQI rating between 201 to 300 is more harmful and AQI over 300 is termed extremely toxic.

According to experts, an increase in air pollution used to be recorded in the winter. A change in the wind speed, wind direction and sliding minimum temperature increases air pollution.

The air becomes heavier in the winter as compared to summer, causing poisonous particles in the atmosphere to move downwards and making the atmosphere polluted. As a result, a layer of polluted particles, including large amounts of carbon and smoke, covers a city.

The smoke produced by burning crop remnants, factories and burning coal, garbage, oil or tyres enters the atmosphere and the effects of this appear at the onset of winter and remain till the season’s end, experts said.

Thus air pollution reaches to extremely dangerous levels, severely compromising the air quality.