Air Quality Index

1. AQI – Air Quality Index
Project by Geet Parhar, Grade 4,
Atlantic

2. What is AQI
• AQI stands for Air Quality Index. This is a
method of describing how good or bad the air
is and how pollution will affect our health
within a short time period.
• The main purpose of AQI is to inform people
about how the air quality will affect their
health.
• This is very important since air is the easiest
way that pollution spreads

3. Who makes AQI
• AQI was created by the EPA – Environmental
Protection Agency - an agency in the USA that
monitors various aspects of the environment.
• Although the EPA publishes its values for Air
Quality which are for America, various
countries have slightly different ways of
reporting the Air Quality and how it affects
the health of humans.

4. How is AQI calculated
• Various countries calculate AQI differently, but in
India, the AQI project was launched in 2014
under the Swachh Bharat campaign after a study
by IIT Kanpur. The Indian values are as shown on
the next page.
• As we can see, the most important components
are PM 2.5, PM 10, NO2 (Nitrogen Dioxide), SO2
(Sulphur dioxide), O3 (Ozone), CO (Carbon
Monoxide), NH3 (Ammonia) and Pb (Lead)

5. AQI components

6. Sources of Pollutants
• SO2, NO2, CO are the direct result of
combustion – sometimes complete,
sometimes incomplete. The main cause of this
combustion is Automobile exhausts and crop
burning.

7. Crop burning
• Crop burning happens because around
October-November, the Kharif crops are
harvested – mainly Rice, Maize, Sugarcane.
Since we live in the NCR, we are surrounded
by agricultural land and after harvesting, the
easiest (cheapest) way for the farmers is to
simply burn the standing crops to prepare the
fields for the next Rabi season (mainly wheat)

8. Automobile Exhausts
• Automobile Exhausts – One of the major
pollutants of the atmosphere is automobile
exhausts. As per government rules, all vehicles
must have their exhausts tested and then
have a Pollution Under Control certificate,
however very frequently we see trucks and
other vehicles emitting a lot of black smoke.
This is what we can see, what we cannot
see….could be much worse.

9. Impact on human health

10. What can we do about it ?
• The two main reasons both need to be tackled
seperately.
• For the crops, the government needs to
ensure that this is not done.
• For automobile exhausts, we must avoid using
vehicles as much as we can, we can use the
metro, electric cars and start carpooling.