Guwahati News Desk: The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the New Delhi-based think tank has claimed that the Guwahati and Agartala are the most populated cities in the Northeast.
According to CSE, Guwahati’s 2020 annual average was also higher than its 2019 average which indicates a continuous worsening of air in the city. On the other hand, Agartala with a 2020 average of 45 micro gramme per cubic metre (ug/m3) is the second most polluted city in the region, while Kohima with a 2020 average of 35 ug/m3 is the third most polluted city in the region.
“The current obsession with high pollution concentration in the Indo-Gangetic Plain and in overall northern India overshadows and sidelines the early signs of the crisis in our northeastern states in the national discourse on air pollution and public health,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director, research and advocacy, CSE.
”Weak and inadequate air quality monitoring and paucity of data do not allow a proper assessment of the risk. But even the limited evidence shows several cities – especially the state capitals — are already vulnerable to poor air quality and winter smog,” she added.
The CSE has analyzed the urban air quality status in the states of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Arunachal Pradesh. This is part of the air quality tracker initiative of the Urban Data Analytics Lab of CSE, which was initiated last winter. The objective of this new analysis is to understand the magnitude and trend in winter pollution in major cities of the region which has recently started real-time air quality monitoring.
