The United States will monitor air quality in multiple locations across North India to help control pollution level, its embassy said in a statement on Monday.
The initiative will cover both urban locations and rural areas and is aimed at helping local communities take remedial measures to deal with the issue of increasing air pollution.
The move came months after the U.S. mission distributed 58 low-cost air-quality monitors and 14 weather stations to the Society for Indoor Environment, an Indian NGO which will be a partner in this project.
The low-cost monitoring is expected to help understand the reasons behind the recent smog-related pollution in North India that was partly blamed on stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana.
“These units will be set up in educational institutions in select second and third-tier cities, as well as rural areas, across North India. The air quality and weather data acquired from these devices will be used to analyse the trends of pollutants outside the major urban centres and build environmental awareness and capacity within smaller communities,” the U.S. Embassy said in the release.
To run the “low-cost monitoring units”, host institutes will be trained in installing and operating the equipment and in collection and analysis of the collected data.
