PUNE: Reach for a scarf, a bandana or the cloth mask if you have been experiencing some breathing discomfort in the past few days. They may just protect you from the ill effects of the city’s deteriorating air quality which data shows has gone down several notches in the last few days.Pune’s air quality touched ‘poor’ for the second time this year on Monday evening, the first being during Diwali when fire crackers were to blame.A pollution expert from the Savitribai Phule Pune University said temperature inversion during winter tends to increase the concentration of pollutants in the air.“Once temperatures dip, the cold air contracts and stagnates. This causes the pollutants emitted to get trapped in the air, instead of being dispersed. Hence, an increase in pollution during winter,” the expert said.Though air quality returned to moderate on Tuesday, locations like Shivajinagar continued to be in the red with very poor air quality, data from Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology's (IITM) Pune System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) showed.Though SAFAR sources could not provide any data, a look at Pune’s air quality on December 3 evening on the SAFAR website showed that it had touched ‘poor’.A source in SAFAR told TOI that the highest PM2.5 concentrations have been observed at three locations__ Shivajinagar, Hadapsar and Lohegaon, where the air quality has been ‘poor’.“Overall, the average pollutant PM2.5 concentration in Pune has been in the moderate category as only three stations recorded concentrations in poor air quality category. The rest of the seven locations were in the moderate category. However, the average PM2.5 concentration in Pune as a whole has been higher since December 2 and has also been crossing the maximum permissible limit since that day,” the source said.In Lohegaon and Hadapsar, the pollutant concentration dropped to the poor category from December 1, while in Shivajinagar, an increase in the pollutants was observed from November 25.“The spike in pollutant concentration and deterioration of air quality are a result of the fall in the mercury in the past few days,” the source said.

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