ASSESSMENT OF AIR QUALITY IN HAORA RIVER BASIN

Abstract

In this paper Air Quality Indices (AQIs) have been derived to assess the status of ambient air quality along Haora river basin using modified Environmental Protection Agency procedure. Air samples have been collected from 10 sampling stations located along the river. Six air pollutants namely, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, suspended particulate matter, PM10 and lead were monitored during April to June 2012 continuously for 24 hours. It appears from the analysis that among all six air pollutants, PM10 was found to be the responsible pollutant to deteriorate ambient air quality which ranges from 130.6 μg/m3 to 572.14 μg/m3. Suspended particulate matter also exist at a critical level ranging from 142.31 μg/m3 to 684.95 μg/m3. The piecewise linear function with maximum operator as aggregation function was used to compute the AQI scores. The computed AQI value for the selected study region varied from moderately pollution level with the AQI score of 160.80 to the severe pollution level with the AQI score of 484.68 at sampling stations S1 and S8 respectively. The index developed was found suitable to demonstrate spatial variations of ambient air quality.