Guwahati, the virtual capital of northeast India, is definitely polluted, but can it be a city with the second highest polluted air across Asia? Amazingly, the list of places with high air pollution, as recently reported by many mainstream media outlets, put Begusarai in Bihar at the top. For almost 48 hours, the ‘manufactured news’ rolled from newspapers and news channels to alternate media outlets, creating an almost panicky situation among the Guwahatians. Many turned happy, as they had a good issue to deal with with the governments in Dispur and New Delhi. But it was short-lived, as the local pollution control agency outright denounced those reports and assured that Guwahati was yet to arrive at the reported position in the air quality index.

An established Guwahati-based media outlet reported on 19 March 2024, “A recent report by the Swiss air quality monitoring body, IQAir, has revealed alarming statistics regarding air pollution levels in various cities worldwide. According to the ‘World Air Quality Report 2023’, Guwahati has been ranked as the second most polluted city. The report highlights the significant increase in air pollution levels across multiple Indian cities. Begusarai, in Bihar, was listed as the world’s most polluted city in 2023, with an average annual PM2.5 concentration far exceeding WHO guidelines. Guwahati, Delhi, and Mullanpur in Punjab closely followed in the rankings. Guwahati saw a doubling of its PM 2.5 concentration from 51 to 105.4 micrograms per cubic metre between 2022 and 2023.”

The question that arises here is: who is IQAir, and why should it be treated as the final authority revealing the air quality index worldwide? What else do they do besides the survey? If one goes with Wikipedia, IQAir is a private company in environmental technology based in Goldach, Switzerland. Founded in 1963, the company produces air purifiers. The Swiss air quality technology company, specialising in protection against airborne pollutants and developing air quality monitoring and air cleaning products, also operates AirVisual, a real-time air quality information platform. As of February 2020, it had around 500 employees worldwide, 150 of them in China, and its most important markets were Asia and North America. As of 2015, IQAir was a family-owned company, and it did not publish concrete information about its revenue or profits.

After hours of the unauthentic news spreading to common people, the Pollution Control Board of Assam (PCBA) came out with an official statement saying, “There has been a misleading report in regards to the air quality of Guwahati city. As per the report, Guwahati has been listed as the second most polluted city in central and south Asia by IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology organisation, reportedly based on average PM2.5 concentration in the year 2023. The agency reported PM 2.5 concentration in Guwahati for the year 2023 as high as 105.4 µg/m3, which is reportedly the second highest concentration for the regional cities in central and south Asian countries.”

In the same IQAir report, the average PM 2.5 concentration in Delhi has been reported as 92.7 µg/m3, and as such, the reported value of PM 2.5 in Guwahati (105.4 µg/m3) is higher than that of Delhi. These misleading reports are causing panic among the people in the state. The PCBA hereby clarifies that there is no need to panic as the air pollution level (PM 2.5 concentration) in Guwahati is absolutely under control of the reported level by IQAir, said Dr Shantanu Kr Dutta (member secretary to the PCBA, an autonomous statutory organisation constituted under the provision of Section 4 of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974).

He also added that the PCBA monitors the ambient air quality in Guwahati round the clock for 365 days through sophisticated continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations (CAAQMS) at four locations (Bamunimaidam, Cotton University-Panbazar, Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport-Azara, and IITG-north Guwahati). Data from these stations is being continuously monitored, and the quality data generated from these CAAQMS is recorded by the Central Pollution Control Board (under the Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Climate Change, GoI), which can be accessed at https://airquality.cpcb.gov.in/AQI_India/.

Speaking to this writer, PCBA chairman Dr Arup Kr Misra clarified that the amount of PM 2.5 is a key indicator of air quality, where PM stands for particulate matter that may be solid or liquid and 2.5 refers to the diameter of the matter, which is 2.5 micrometres or smaller (around 3 per cent of the diameter of a human hair). On the other hand, the unit µg/m3 stands for microgrammes (one-millionth of a gramme) per cubic metre of air. He also informed me that the recorded air quality data from the CAAQMS, whose technology is approved by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and GoI, reflects an average monthly PM2.5 concentration of 52.8 µg/m3 in 2023, with a maximum concentration of 98.3 µg/m3 recorded in July and a minimum concentration of 22.62 µg/m3 recorded in January.

The average PM 2.5 concentration in Guwahati city for 2022 was 52.61 µg/m3. All this data contradicts the report of IQAir, whose data source is not revealed. As per the IQAir report, the average PM 2.5 concentration in Guwahati for 2023 was reported as high as 105.4 µg/m3, which is almost double the recorded value by the CPCB and state boards, added Dr. Misra. The PCBA has already informed the Union government in New Delhi and the state government in Dispur about the misleading information in a new global report by IQAir titled ‘2023 World Air Quality Report—Region and City PM 2.5 Ranking’ covering 7,812 cities in 134 countries, regions, and territories. It also urged the residents of Guwahati to carry out normal activities without any fear, simply ignoring such unscientific and absurd reports.

The Assam government, under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), has been implementing various action plans to improve the ambient air quality in Guwahati, along with four other towns, namely Nagaon, Nalbari, Sivasagar, and Silchar. Various stake-holding government departments and agencies help to implement the NCAP action plans, which have helped in maintaining air quality in populous cities in terms of average PM2.5 concentration in 2023 (52.8 µg/m3) and 2022 (52.61 µg/m3). Probably, the poor quality of air (as portrayed by the IQAir report and subsequently highlighted by various print and electronic media outlets) would have a far-reaching manifestation in the normal life and activities of Guwahatians, which is yet to be observed.

It needs education to report a scientific revelation and deserves wisdom to portray the findings. The media, often found to be extraordinarily happy to defame its own place and people, could have published the report with a note that IQAir is a private company that also produces air purifiers. Moreover, any local scientific agency should have been consulted for final dissimilation. The editor-journalists must empower themselves to deal with various technological parameters before artificial intelligence (AI) grabs the entire space. Moreover, it makes no sense to try to score personal political vendettas with factually wrong input. Otherwise, the new generation of news consumers will not hesitate to dump a section of mainstream media as a pollutant entity itself.

The writer is a Guwahati-based special representative of The Statesman.