During late 80's and early 90's, I used to love and look forward to the mornings-after-rainy-nights in Bangalore. Pollution was a problem then too. But such mornings with crisp, clean, clear air was something else.
Today was one of those mornings after the rain. What a difference. A stretch of road in my layout had no visible dust in the air. But at a distance, there was the city. Hazy.
When we say pollution, we think of vehicle emissions, horrible oxides... All too easily we forget to notice that atmospheric dust (called road dust) is one of the most prominent air pollutants. According to this
Wikipedia entry, it can make up to a third of the air pollution.
We seem to have polices to curb harmful emissions, increasing green cover, avoiding vehicle idling in a grid lock or a traffic light... Certainly important, but I see almost no policy or action towards reducing the road dust in the city. If you were in Bangalore over years, it is very easy to see how its proportion has multiplied.
Simple things can do a lot of good. Keep the roads pothole free. Asphalt roads!. Or coat gravel / mud roads (I'm not even sure if there is such a thing in Bangalore, though is routine in western countries. See
this PDF document with one such requirement). Mandate simple precautions in construction sites. Avoid dumping mud and other construction material all over the place. Grow grass on the shoulders. Lay good foot paths. Mandate covering trucks carrying sand and cement. Clean the roads regularly (to take out traffic generated dust).
If you travelled on Mysore road recently, you have a glaring example. SP Road at Town Hall was dug up and the muddy patch didn't see asphalt for at least 6 weeks. Why don't we mandate (which is probably already in the requirements, but ignored) that any road digging has to be immediately followed by asphalting, even if it needs digging in the next few weeks?
With alarming statistics (50% kids report Asthma in this
old TOI article), and initiatives to measure air quality biting road dust most of the time (this
KSPCB website has very little data for you to retrieve), something needs to be done. It is imperative that someone starts to take interest in such not-so-fancy mundane stuff.
Prajegale, would you have ideas and / or leads we could follow to influence the quality of air we breathe? What can we do? Who is responsible?Who could we talk to?
Thanks,
Ravi
ಪ್ರತಿಕ್ರಿಯೆಗಳು
Hosur Road
Regards,
Pradeep
“An act of charity by the citizens questions the worthiness of the government.”
Road Dust In Bangalore
You can join the road working group
Suhas
Suhas