High AQI causes serious health issues

LAHORE : The Air Quality Index (AQI) of the provincial metropolis remained high resulting in serious health issues for the citizens as well as keeping the city at the first place on the world’s top ten most polluted cities in the world.

Data collected from IQAir revealed that the AQI of the city was 345 whereas data released by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) revealed the AQI was 353 at Town Hall, 332 at EPA Headquarters, National Hockey Stadium and 243 at Punjab University, College of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

In the list of world’s top ten most polluted cities, Delhi, India stood second with an AQI of 292 and Hangzhou, China stood third with an AQI of 230. The remaining cities included Wuhan, China (205), Chengdu, China (187), Chongqing, China (186), Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina (186), Shenyang, China (183), Hanoi, Vietnam (183) and Dhaka, Bangladesh (174).

Meanwhile, Met officials said continental air was prevailing over most parts of the country. They predicted that mainly cold and dry weather was expected in most parts of the country while very cold and cloudy in northern parts and northern Balochistan during evening/night.

They added that dense fog/smog was likely to persist in plain areas of Punjab, fog/smog may also occur in plain areas of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and upper Sindh during night and morning and frost may occur at few places in Pothohar region and Kashmir during morning hours. Thursday’s lowest minimum temperature was recorded at Skardu and Leh where mercury dropped down to -09°C while in Lahore it was 5.8°C and maximum was 19.5°C.