Air at 8 out of 10 hot spots hasn't improved much in 5 years: Data

The air quality at Delhi's pollution "hot spots" has not significantly improved over the past five years, especially when compared to how the rest of the city has fared in the same period, an analysis by HT revealed.

- Abhishek Jha

To assess whether air quality has improved at hot spots relatively more than the rest of the city, HT checked PM2.5 concentration levels from 33 monitoring stations between October 1 and November 10 (six stations were excluded because they had data for less than 90% of days in at least one year from 2019 to 2024). The analysis showed that while pollution levels have declined in 2024 at these hot spot stations when compared to 2019, these improvements are less substantial than the city's overall average reduction in PM2.5.

Among the 10 most polluted stations in 2019, eight have shown less improvement than the average, suggesting no substantial progress at these hot spots (see chart).

To be sure, the simple answer to this question is somewhat meaningless because the weather (which has a big influence on air quality in the city) is not the same every year.