Patna, Feb. 21: Patna residents can now keep tabs on the quality of air they breathe. For, the state pollution control board is going to put in place a system to provide round-the-clock information on the air quality in the city.

The pollution board would set up a continuous ambient air quality monitoring system at the planetarium near the Income Tax roundabout in the state capital. It would, in all likelihood, start functioning by the end of March this year.

“The system would keep tabs on the air quality of a particular area, giving details on the presence of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, respiratory suspended particulate matter (RSPM), carbon dioxide apart from showing temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction,” a senior scientist of the board, Naveen Kumar, told The Telegraph.

Kumar said the city dwellers passing through the planetarium area would easily see the information on the air quality on a 6ftx4ft LCD display board, providing round-the-clock information.

“The new system would be set up at an estimated cost of Rs 80 lakh,” he said, before adding that the board, till now, has been collecting samples manually from Gandhi Maidan and Beltron Bhavan, which houses the pollution control board office.

The current mechanism, under which the board prepares data manually, does not provide access to the common man about the actual state of the air quality whose date, most of the time, is provided with a delay of a day or two but the new system would do away with the old practice as it would collect, analyse and display it automatically.

It is high time that the city residents must be aware of the ill-effects of the polluting air’s effect on the health as Patna has crossed the permissible standard limit of 100mg per cubic metre of RSPM. It recorded 155mg and 168mg per cubic metre from Beltron Bhavan and Gandhi Maidan respectively.

On being asked, Kumar attributed the low presence of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide in Patna’s air to the absence of industries, particularly coal-based firms or thermal power plants or diesel buses, in and around the city.

Observations show that wherever the air pollution level is high, the incidence of having respiratory disorders such as asthma, cough, allergy, lung congestion among others is more common in that area.

Asked why it has chosen the planetarium to set up the monitoring station, S.N. Jaiswal, another scientist of the pollution control board, said: “Apart from being in the heart of the city, it is also the ideal place to judge the air quality as we cannot have such a system in a polluted area or in the green belt. A huge number of vehicles cross this place too.”

“Work on the project, initiated by the board two years ago, is underway in full swing as most of the groundwork has been completed and components of the system have already been imported from Australia, the Netherlands, UK,” said Jaiswal, while making it clear that most of the components are not made in India, hence the board had to get them imported.

The board also plans to set up a round-the-clock air quality monitoring system in Muzaffarpur, the commercial hub of north Bihar and Gaya, the international tourist place.