Study of Air Quality Index for Particulate Matter in Ambient Air of West Nagpur Zone, India

In this project an attempt to find the quality of the ambient air in the West Nagpur Zone is carried out. Mainly the two criteria of pollutants viz. Respirable suspended particulate matter, Suspended particulate matter are taken into account for carrying out the present research work. The sampling was done at nine monitoring sites covering three sites for each residential, commercial and industrial zone across the West Nagpur area in two seasons i.e. winter season (December and January) and summer season (March and April). Sampling duration was for twenty-four hours at each monitoring site. Analytical results show average RSPM concentration in residential, commercial and industrial areas for winter and summer season does not exceed the NAAQS standards. Again considering the average concentrations of RSPM for all three locations it was found that the Air quality index (AQI) for winter and summer season, the residential area comes under good category i.e. varying between 0-50 µg/m3, the commercial area comes under moderate category i.e. varying between 51-100 µg/m3 during winter and under good category during summer while the industrial area comes under moderate category in both winter and summer season.. However the concentration of particulate matter during the summer season is less as compared to the winter season due to high wind speed conditions resulting in dilution of pollutants in the air.