In a fresh report by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) released for Wednesday 21st November, Muzaffarpur is been marked as the most polluted city among all. The figures released by the CPCB were for all cities of India and just not Bihar.
The cities with severe air quality were: Muzaffarpur- 445, Bhiwadi- 444, Patna- 423, Jorapokhar- 402 PM2.5 respectively.
Last year, Muzaffarpur was witnessed with the worst air quality with PM2.5 recorded at 985 μg/m3, which was over 16 times higher than the national standard. It was observed that more than half of the days (58%) in Muzaffarpur had bad air quality. The Central Pollution Control Board has installed pollution detection machines in 134 cities whose report are checked every after one hour.
Even experts and scientists on pollution issue are worried on degrading air quality of the city as because the common source of pollution are high industrialization, high load of vehicles on the road, dust from generator machines and road but interestingly Muzaffarpur city is neither an industrialized city nor it has high load of vehicles. Such a severe condition of air just cannot be from road dust and generator machines. But at the same time open burning of household wastes is one viable reason for this problem.
District Magistrate of Muzaffarpur, Mohammad Sohail said, “Despite being a holiday, the reason for such high pollution may have different factors. To confront this challenge a plan has been charted out which will provide positive results after the month of February and March. Figures are being collected. The State Pollution Control Board and the Central government are working together to get the solution.”
