Summary:
more-inFirecrackers continue to be the preferred mode of celebrating Deepavali in the city, with the three-day festival seeing a significant 52% increase in air pollution. At Domlur and S.G.
Halli near Basaveshwaranagar, PM10 levels more than doubled; at Kaji Sonnenahalli on the outskirts of of the city, pollution levels breached the 100 microgrammes per cubic metre mark after a 62.5% bump during Deepavali. In 2015, the average value of PM10 (using select monitoring stations as reference) was 95 microgrammes per cubic metre. While saying there was a clear link between increasing pollution and bursting of fire crackers, he believed there was a need to increase awareness of the human cost of bursting crackers. This year’s level was 126 microgrammes per cubic metre of air..