Mumbai chokes on ‘very poor’ air for third consecutive day – The Indian Express

On Saturday, the city recorded an AQI reading of 319. According to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecast and Research (SAFAR) dashboard six out of the nine AQI monitoring stations located in several pockets in Mumbai recorded AQI readings above 300.

Mazagaon in south Mumbai had the worst air quality with a reading of 354, followed by Chembur (342), Bandra-Kurla Complex (337), Malad (323) and Andheri (326).

Colaba recorded an AQI of 314, followed by Bhandup with an AQI of 259, Borivali saw a reading of 228 while Worli recorded an AQI of 186.

Weather experts said that the current standard of AQI will continue till the end of January. “The AQI levels have dropped due to low-wind speed. Last week the overall wind speed paced up a bit, which led to the dispersion of air particulate matter from the lower atmosphere. Currently, the speed has slowed down due to which the pollutants are lingering in the lower atmosphere for longer hours in the form of haze and mist, leading to poor AQI,” said Gufran Beig, senior scientist and project director at SAFAR said.

“Till 2021, the wind reversal in Mumbai used to happen after every three to four days but now it is happening after a gap of 15 days due to which the frequency of high-speed winds blowing from the sea is less. Since Mumbai is an island city, its air quality is solely dependent on the wind blowing from the sea,” he said.

According to SAFAR’s AQI monitoring chart, an AQI between 0-50 is termed ‘good’, between 51-100 is ‘satisfactory’, 101-200 is regarded as ‘moderate’, 201-300 is viewed as ‘poor’, a reading of 301-400 is ‘very poor’ and recordings of 400+ AQI is labelled ‘severe’.