Status of air quality monitoring in India: Spatial spread, population coverage and data completeness

July 01, 2023

When compliance with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards and the clean air targets under the National Clean Air Programme requires robust air quality monitoring for trend assessment, only 12 per cent of the of 4041 Census cities and towns have air quality monitoring systems and only 200 cities monitor all six key criteria pollutants.

This leaves nearly 47 per cent of the country’s population outside the maximum radius of air quality monitoring grid (manual and real time combined) and 62 per cent are outside that of real time monitoring network.

This has emerged from the new assessment by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) of the status of air quality monitoring grid in the country.

Limited air quality monitoring makes it challenging to identify non-attainment status of a vast number of towns/ cities and regions and also impedes effective evaluation of clean air action and improvement in air quality needed for evaluation of performance of clean air action especially under the 15th Finance Commission grant. More harmful PM2.5 and ozone are not considered for compliance under NCAP due to limited monitoring and data. It is necessary to ensure more equitable distribution of monitors and adoption of hybrid monitoring with standardized and certified air sensor network and satellite based monitoring with appropriate protocol for maximum and cost effective coverage of population to support action.