Survey Gauges City’s Attitude Towards Issues On Environment

Mumbai: Climate change is no longer an environmentalist’s concern. Erratic weather, change in temperature, depletion of air quality and wind patterns seem to be weighing on Mumbaikars’ minds too.

Pune: City-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology officially launched its second ‘System of Air Quality Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) - Pune’ for Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad on Wednesday. Other facilities such as ‘air quality and weather assessment and data on hitech-digital India’ (AWADHI) — a one stop-shop for metro air quality information was also launched.

In addition to it, an ‘interactive voice response (IVR) service’ was also introduced, where citizens of Pune can get the current and 24-hour advance forecast information on air quality and weather of Pune and Delhi just by dialing a toll free number.

Except for Manali, other areas saw higher RSPM levels than previous year

A. Heera, a resident of Ajax in Tiruvottiyur, remembers a time when her area was clean and beautiful. “Now, the roads are so dusty a brown cloud hovers when vehicles pass by. The roads in our area are hardly swept and with construction work and road widening on, the dust is unimaginable,” she said.

Visakhapatnam: The famous port town of Visakhapatnam happens to be one of the worst-affected towns in the state, as far as the environmental pollution goes, according to the official data recently retrieved by a city based voluntary organisation under the Right to Information Act.

The shocking revelation flies in the face of the Visakhapatnam Port Trust’s tall claims about Vizag being “environmentally the best managed town” in the state. In fact, the situation is so serious that about 44 people died in the town in the past one year owing to the environmental pollution, according a city based voluntary organisation.