Kolkata, Feb 3 (PTI) The West Bengal Pollution Control Board (WBPCB) has partnered with Columbia University and a Bengaluru-based think tank to examine whether pollutants in urban industrial areas and rural regions of the state exhibit similar levels of toxicity, a senior official said on Tuesday.
The study would help determine whether variations in pollutant composition result in differing public health impact, he said.
“If toxicity levels differ between urban and rural areas, the health implications will also differ,” the WBPCB official said.
He also said that Air Quality Index (AQI) readings may not always accurately reflect the toxic nature of pollutants across locations.
“When the eastern metropolis' AQI hovers around 200, it may go upto nearly 250 in Durgapur, an industrial hub. At the same time, AQI readings at Jalangi in Murshidabad, a rural monitoring station, can be of the same level.
"This has led us to examine whether urban industrial and rural pollutants are equally toxic,” the official said.
The WBPCB currently operates around 400 pollution monitoring stations across the state, which generate data at 15-minute intervals.
Columbia University, led by Faye McNeill, Principal Investigator of its Clean Air Initiative, is assisting the Board in data calibration, analysis, and policy advisory support.
WBPCB Chairman Kalyan Rudra said it shares pollution data with college and university researchers to help generate policy inputs and suggest additional pollution-control measures.
"There is a need to analyse and study climate change," he said, flagging rising carbon-dioxide emissions and increasing temperatures over the past three centuries, which altered ecological patterns, resulted in crop losses and possible rise in frequency of cyclones.
Rudra said sustained efforts by the environment department and the WBPCB in recent years caused improvement in the air quality index situation.