India needs an EPA to tackle pollution

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, former chief scientist at the World Health Organization, says India should adopt an "airshed approach" to analyze its air pollution crisis and set up an environment protection agency to enforce government rules with strict action.

- Priyanka Sharma

The remarks by Swaminathan, who is principal adviser to the National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme at the Union health ministry, were made in an interview with Mint. They come amid an air pollution crisis in Delhi-NCR. Edited excerpts:

Every year during the onset of winters, an air pollution havoc starts. What lessons should we draw?

The National Clean Air Program (NCAP) have set up close to 1,000 monitoring stations nationwide. We need to put such stations in rural areas. We also need to do airshed approach analysis because air is not something which is limited over Delhi or cities.

What is airshed analysis?