Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) today launched a daily bulletin service to highlight air quality index in eight cities namely Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Faridabad, Kanpur, Agra and Varanasi.
The bulletin was launched on CPCB's website and will provide a comparative data of air quality index on a daily basis in the categories of moderate, satisfactory and poor, apart from giving the major pollutant in that particular area.
The index will be calculated as an average of past 24 hours.
The bulletin covers eight cities in the country, which will be eventually increased, a senior Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change official said.
"Initially, the important capitals and the millennium cities have been taken. More cities will be incorporated gradually," he said.
As per today's bulletin, Delhi has the poorest air quality while Chennai was marked as satisfactory.
"The data is being collected from different air quality monitoring stations across these states. In case of a city with multiple monitoring locations, average value is used to indicate air quality," the official said.
Delhi has ten air quality monitoring stations, Tamil Nadu three and there is one each in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Faridabad, Kanpur, Agra and Varanasi.
Two of Delhi's stations, Mandir Marg and R K Puram showed very-poor air quality today, while it was poor at two other places, Shadipur and IGI.
Amid alarming reports about pollution level in Indian cities, government has prepared an action plan to be reviewed after three months and launched an air quality index on April 6 to monitor the air quality in ten cities.
