Tackling Air Pollution at the Source

With 22 Indian cities in the top 30 most polluted cities in the world (IQAir, 2020), our new dependence on pollution management at receptors — such as smog towers, water sprinkling on roads, etc. — will fail miserably unless we prioritise source correction. We lack the capacity to remove all particulate or gaseous pollutants as no existing filtering technology can handle India’s current emission rates. Moreover, these rather optimistic solutions might give some big emitters the green signal to emit more. Our collective efforts should go towards curbing the problem at its source, starting with emission inventory (EI) — which the Centre for Air Pollution Studies (CAPS) team at CSTEP has been working on for quite some time now.