Topics Covered: Pollution related issues.
Anti-smog guns
What to study?
For Prelims: How anti smog guns work?
For Mains: Need for and significance, concerns associated with Delhi Air pollution.
Context: Anti-smog guns installed at 14 large project sites in Delhi.
Background:
On January 13, the Supreme Court had said that anti-smog guns should be mandatory in projects that require environmental clearance from the State or Centre, and have a built-up area of over 20,000 square metres. As per this, 47 large projects in Delhi had to have these guns installed.
What is it?
- Anti-smog gun is a device that sprays nebulised water droplets into the atmosphere to reduce air pollution.
- Connected to a water tank and mounted on a vehicle, the device could be taken across the city to spray water to settle dust and other suspended particles.
- It can spray water up to a height of 50 metres and the results were positive as the spray acts like rain and settles dust particles and also PM 2.5.
Why we need such measures?
Delhi has been grappling with hazardous levels of pollution since late October, with the air quality dipping to “severe” category a few times. Air pollution and the resulting smog is an outcome of three inputs – local emission of pollutants, emission transport from other states and regions, and meteorological factors like wind speed and temperature.
Need of the hour:
Fragmented policies and toothless environment bodies won’t help. The centre and states will have to work jointly and quickly. Human lungs don’t understand nuances of federalism and partisan politics.
Sources: the Hindu.
