Delhi, Feb 24: Every year, we monitor the ambient air quality in our cities using AQI monitors. But, what about indoor air? How clean is indoor air, and what are the things that affect indoor air quality?
The Centre of Excellence for Research on Clean Air (CERCA), IIT Delhi; Society for Indoor Environment (SIE), and Kaiterra partnered to conduct a study on indoor air quality in Delhi’s buildings. They covered 37 buildings – offices, schools, hospitals, restaurants, etc. Here is what they found:
- Indoor air in Delhi’s buildings can be called polluted. The values of PM10, PM2.5, carbon dioxide, etc. were found to be 2-5 times higher than the permissible limits set by Central Pollution Control Board and 10-15 times higher than the WHO 24-hours’ average limits for all the buildings.
- Some of the reasons for this indoor air pollution include high usage of cleaning chemicals, too many people in a place, lack of ventilation, etc.
