New Delhi: Delhi's air was in the "severe" band by late morning on Wednesday, with the Air Quality Index touching 488 around 11 am, according to readings compiled by air quality monitoring platforms. At that level, the platforms estimate, a day of breathing the capital's air is equivalent to smoking about 14 cigarettes.
The reading follows a daily average of 410 on Tuesday, already the worst of the season so far, and it has arrived days before Diwali rather than after it. Data from the Central Pollution Control Board showed individual stations in the city crossing 500, with Mandir Marg among the worst.
The Commission for Air Quality Management has already moved to GRAP-2, the second stage of the graded response action plan, which brings restrictions on certain vehicles and tighter curbs on construction and demolition activity.
The Delhi government's winter action plan adds its own measures: restrictions on specified categories of vehicles entering the capital, curbs on construction, a "No PUC, No Fuel" rule at filling stations, and a push on public transport. How strictly each of these is enforced is a separate question, and the one residents ask every November.
What is different this year is timing. Pollution at this level a week before the festival means the post-Diwali peak, if it comes, will start from a higher base. Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, the other half of the annual explanation, has been under scrutiny for weeks.
The health advice is unglamorous and unchanged. Early-morning outdoor exercise, when the inversion layer traps pollutants close to the ground, is the worst possible time for it. Those with asthma, children and the elderly are the first to feel it, and hospital outpatient counts in the city usually show it within days.
Delhi's air improves through July to September each year, and the gains are gone by November. The measures announced so far are the familiar set. Whether they bite is decided on the ground, by the number of challans issued and the number of sites actually stopped.