Abstract
Ground-based ambient air monitoring was conducted at five different locations in Mandi-Gobindgarh (critically polluted area), Punjab, in order to determine the impact of stubble burning on the concentration of Particulate Matter (PM) in ambient air for one rice crop season (October 2012 to January 2013) and one wheat crop season (March 2013 to May 2013). The concentration of PM10 and PM2.5 in the ambient air was found to be more for industrial site as compared to other agricultural and mixed land use sites. Concentration of PM was found to be more in winters than in summers. The impact of stubble burning on the ambient air quality was found to be more for agricultural site (S1) when compared to other sites with an appreciable increase in concentration of PM10 and PM2.5 respectively during the paddy harvesting period and during wheat harvesting period. In general, the concentration of PM10 was significantly higher than PM2.5 and both the concentrations were beyond the prescribed limits in the ambient air. Total concentration of water soluble ionic species were found in the order of wheat pre-harvesting period
Highlights
Ambient air pollution is of great concern a day due to its damaging effect on human health and property
In order to adjudge the impact of paddy crop residue burning on air quality, the concentration of Particles less than 10 (PM10) and PM2.5 were plotted against three sampling periods i.e. pre-harvesting, harvesting and postharvesting for all the five sampling sites and are shown in Figures 2a and 2b respectively
There was an increase of 86.7% and 53.2% in PM10 and PM2.5 respectively when compared to pre-harvesting period for agri site (S1)
Summary
Ambient air pollution is of great concern a day due to its damaging effect on human health and property. Apart from industrial and vehicular emissions, crop residue burning in agricultural fields is one of the main reasons for the deterioration of the ambient air quality of Mandi-Gobindgarh. In the survey of Gao et al [2], on an average, only 6.6% of the crop residue was burned in the fields and 36.6% of the crop residue was returned to the soil directly It has been reported by Yang et al that many pollutants are released because of crop residue burning in China, resulting in serious pollution of ambient air. The impact of spatiotemporal characteristics on ambient air-quality attributed to open burning of rice straw was assessed and it was reported that the average hourly incremental concentrations between the episode and non-episodes were greater than 300 mg m-3 for PM10 [3]. The annual average amount of burned area was estimated as 4.7 Mha and the average annual amount of burned rice residue is Received October 25, 2014; Accepted March 02, 2015; Published March 05, 2015
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