Dust situation in Delhi may improve from Saturday onwards
New Delhi, June 15: Persistently suffering "severe" air quality for third day in row, the National Capital Region's (NCR) dusty situation is likely to improve from Saturday onwards, Met official said on Friday.
Coarse particles in Delhi's air, due to dust-raising winds from Rajasthan and excessive construction activities around in the NCR, bought the air quality to severe on June 13. Due to this, PM10 or particle with diameter less than 10 microns became the major pollutant and PM2.5 or finer particles the secondary in NCR.
At 3 p.m. on Friday, the PM10 averaged at 717 units, against 765.6 units at same time on Thursday. However, by 5 p.m. on Friday, the levels dropped down by 656 units.
While Delhi and regions around it may start seeing some improvement from Saturday onwards due to change in winds, Rajasthan will get no respite till Tuesday.
"The situation is set to improve in Delhi from Saturday and by Sunday, there will be considerable improvement in air quality as dust will begin settling down," India Meteorological Department scientist Kuldeep Srivastava told IANS.
There are also slight chances of very light rains on Sunday around Delhi, which may improve the situation further, IMD said.
According to private weather agency Skymet, winds are set to chance from currently dust-raising westerly and south-westerly to north-westerly on Saturday which may slightly improve the situation.
"Currently winds from Rajasthan and Balochistan are bringing in dust which are set to change to north-westerly," Skymet Director Mahesh Palawat told IANS.
Meanwhile, the Air Quality Index (AQI) of Delhi saw deteriorating trend, with AQI at 4 pm on Friday was 447 against 431 on Thursday, both severe, on a scale of 0 to 500. However, the prominent pollutant on Friday was PM 10 while on Thursday it was both PM2.5 and PM10.
Delhi Lt. Governor Anuil Baijal on Thursday also barred construction activities and stone crushers around Delhi for three days.
"Dust and excessive construction activities around NCR are the primary reason of such a deterioration of air quality and giving rise to the coarser PM10 as primary pollutant," an scientist at Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) told IANS.
The scientist however added that there is also considerable presence of finer particle or PM2.5, which arise from vehicles and diesel generator sets.
However, neither the generator sets were barred in Delhi, nor the entry of trucks was stopped, as provisioned under Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) of Supreme Court appointed Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority for NCR.
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'Low-quality' catheters supplied to West Bengal govt hospitals at high price, probe ordered
Kolkata (PTI): The West Bengal health department has launched a probe into the supplies of allegedly low-quality and locally made catheters at a high price to several government hospitals, posing a risk to the lives of patients undergoing treatment in these facilities, officials said.
Such central venous catheters (CVCs) were allegedly supplied to at least five medical colleges and hospitals in the state, defying allocation of international standard-compliant CVCs, they said.
The distribution company, which has been accused of supplying these catheters to government hospitals, admitted to the fault but placed the blame on its employees.
"We started checking stocks some time back and found these locally made CVCs in my hospital store. These catheters are of low quality as compared to those allocated by the state. We have informed the state health department," a senior official of the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital told PTI.
Low-quality catheters were also found in the stores of other hospitals, which indicates "possible involvement of insiders in the scam", a health department official said.
The low-quality CVCs were supplied by a distributor in the Hatibagan area in the northern part of Kolkata for the last three to four months, he said.
"Such kinds of local CVCs are priced around Rs 1,500 but the distributor took Rs 4,177 for each device," the official said.
A CVC is a thin and flexible tube that is inserted into a vein to allow for the administration of fluids, blood, and other treatment. It's also clinically called a central line catheter.
"An initial probe revealed that the distribution company Prakash Surgical had supplied the low-quality and locally manufactured catheters to several government hospitals instead of the CVCs of the government-designated international company.
"All the units will be tested and a proper investigation is on to find out who benefited from these supplies," the health department official said.
The distribution company blamed its employees for the supply of inferior quality catheters.
"I was sick for a few months. Some employees of the organisation made this mistake. We are taking back all those units that have gone to the hospitals. It's all about misunderstanding," an official of the distribution company told PTI.
According to another state health department official, a complaint was lodged with the police in this connection.
Asked about how many patients were affected by the usage of such low-quality CVCs, the official said, "The probe would also try to find that out".
According to sources in the health department, some of the staff of the hospitals' equipment receiving departments and some local officials of international organisations might be involved in the alleged irregularities.
