Kolkata: With bursting of firecrackers that started on Diwali, continuing till late on Friday night, pollution levels in Kolkata and the city’s adjoining areas continued to spike on Saturday.
As per the Air Quality Index (AQI) monitoring machines the AQI levels crossed the 300 mark on Friday night.
The AQI ranging from 301 and above comes under the ‘purple’ or ‘hazardous’ category, which means that there is a health warning of emergency conditions with the possibilities of all categories of people being affected by the dirty air.
The areas in the city from where maximum reports of firecrackers, including banned high decibel crackers being burst, were reported include Ballygunge Circular Road, Behala and Tollygunge in South Kolkata and Maniktala, Lake Town and Ultadanga in North Kolkata.
Despite police action against the bursting of banned high-decibel firecrackers, people continued to use them and in most places in the city the sound-levels were above the permissible limits of 75 decibels.
Similar infractions were reported from Salt Lake on the northern outskirts of Kolkata and the city-adjacent Howrah town.
In the last two days, Kolkata Police arrested a total of 601 people, which included 265 for bursting banned crackers with high decibels.
Environment activists say that police action is not enough to control this menace unless the people in general become aware of the hazards of the pollution caused by lighting crackers.
Generally, the pollution levels in the city start spiking from Kali Puja and Diwali and continue to go up in the entire winter season.
The only time there is a respite from the pollution is when there are occasional showers, the possibility of which has been ruled out right now by the Regional Meteorological Office in Kolkata.
As per the predictions of the office, the weather conditions will be dry in the entire south Bengal in the coming days with the possibility of temperature levels declining in the next couple of days.
However, the office has predicted some scattered rainfall in certain districts of north Bengal in the next couple of days.
The untimely rainfall in the state last month was because of the impact of the landfall of Cyclone Dana. However, with that impact being over, the state is getting prepared for a prolonged dry spell and high pollution levels.
–IANS