Assessment of Ambient Air Quality in Urban Environments of Hyderabad, India

Environmental pollution is an ever-increasing problem in the industrialized and highly populated areas of the world. Recently the intensity and magnitude of air pollutant concentration has grown up rapidly in the troposphere. Hyderabad, capital of Andhra Pradesh, is a centre of southern part of India for both industrial and commercial activity. It is one of the most populous urban areas with approximately 6.8 million inhabitants and over 73,000 small, medium and major industrial establishments sharing the greater city. The air pollution is primarily associated with automobiles and industrial sources of which motor vehicles are of major concern. The available information on the levels of ambient gaseous pollutants in tropical areas particularly Asian countries were meagre and keeping in the view of health effects and economic burden associated with the elevated levels of air pollutants, the present study was undertaken with an objective to assess the ambient air quality of Hyderabad which is undergoing rapidly urban and industrial development. For this study, the air samples were drawn at the height of 1.5-3.0 m from the ground level in order to monitor the PM, SPM, oxides of nitrogen and sulphur concentrations to ascertain the relationship between gaseous air pollutants and meteorological parameters. The overall result reveals that the air quality of environment is deteriorating rapidly due to gaseous pollutants. This study lead us to conclude that multiple approach is needed to combat the air pollution by vehicles via public awareness campaigns, media intervention packages, effective government action plans and programmes and judicious distribution of quality oriented fuels.