Impact on Air Quality Index of India Due to Lockdown.

ABSTRACT

For the very first time, on 22-March-2020 the Indian government forced the only known method at that time to prevent the outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic which was restricting the social movements, and this led to imposing lockdown for a few days which was further extended for a few months. As the impact of lockdown, the major causes of air pollution were ceased which resulted in cleaner blue skies and hence improving the air quality standards. This paper presents an analysis of air quality particulate matter (PM)2.5, PM10, Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), and Air quality index (AQI). The analysis indicates that the PM10 AQI value drops impulsively from (40-45%), compared before the lockdown period, followed by NO2 (27-35%), Sulphur Dioxide (SO2) (2-10%), PM2.5 (35-40%), but the Ozone (O3) rises (12-25%). To regulate air quality, many steps were taken at national and regional levels, but no effective outcome was received yet. Such short-duration lockdowns are against economic growth but led to some curative effects on AQI. So, this paper concludes that even a short period lockdown can result in significant improvement in Air quality.