Pune: Indian homes are among prime contributors to worsening air quality in cities alongside pollution by usual suspects such as transport and power sectors, two studies using different methodologies have documented. The papers, published last month in prominent scientific journals, arrived at the findings by tracking sources of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and emissions from domestic fuel usage across the urban belt.
One of the papers was a modelling study by Pune's Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and IIT Roorkee. "We found that residential emissions dominated PM2.5 pollution in 29 cities, including Srinagar, Kanpur and Allahabad.
Transport emissions were the primary contributors in nine cities, including Delhi, where vehicular exhaust accounted for 55% of PM2.5 pollution," IITM scientist Rajmal Jat said. In the other study, Berhampur University in Odisha and Bengaluru's Indian Institute of Science (IISc) prepared a high-resolution emission inventory for the base year 2020 that shows vehicle fumes as the leading source of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the air, while residential activities account for a majority of carbon monoxide (CO) emissions.
The IITM and IIT Roorkee study complements these findings. Their analysis of PM2.5 pollution across 53 cities attributes the bulk of emissions to residential fuel use and vehicular exhaust.
While the Berhampur University-IISc study analysed emissions data from four years ago, the IIT.