Suyash Dwivedi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Cropped.
The air at Bhopal's TT Nagar monitoring station more than doubled in pollution within five hours on Diwali night, as fireworks pushed several Madhya Pradesh cities into the very poor category.
Readings reported by Dainik Bhaskar show the Air Quality Index at TT Nagar rising from 150 at 10 pm on Sunday to 314 at 3 am on Monday. At Idgah Hills it climbed from 140 to 263, and at Paryavaran Parisar from 213 to 302.
Averaged over 24 hours from 5 am Sunday to 5 am Monday, Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board data put TT Nagar at 355 and Paryavaran Parisar at 296, according to Amar Ujala. Both figures were higher than last Diwali, by 42 and 37 points.
Bhopal was not the worst. Gwalior's Deendayal Nagar recorded the state's highest reading at 3 am, 363, and all three Gwalior stations were in the very poor band. Indore's Chhoti Gwaltoli touched 338 and Jabalpur's Marhatal 328. By 3 am, at least nine stations across the state had crossed 300: two each in Bhopal, Indore and Jabalpur, and three in Gwalior.
The same night also showed how local the smoke was. In Indore, the airport station barely moved, from 99 to 98, and Regional Park stayed at 72, while Magoda Nagar jumped from 203 to 316.
An AQI between 301 and 400 is classed as very poor, a level at which prolonged exposure can cause breathing illness. On Sunday morning, before the fireworks, Paryavaran Parisar had already read 277, against 208 on the morning of last Diwali.
Hashtags: #ApnaBhopal #AirQuality #Diwali #MadhyaPradesh #BhopalAQI #TTNagar #GwaliorAQI #DiwaliPollution #MPPCB #BhopalDiwaliNightAQI
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