Mukesh Khare

• Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Green-blue-grey infrastructure (GBGI) offers environmental benefits in urban areas, yet its impact on air pollution is under-researched, and the literature fragmented. This review evaluates quantitative studies on GBGI's capability to mitigate air pollution, compares their specific pollutant removal processes, and identifies areas for further inves...

The aim of this guide is to translate scientific research into easy-to-implement precautionary measures and actions adoptable by homeowners, builders, and regulatory bodies to reduce human exposure to in-kitchen pollution in LMIC homes. This document offers 10 generic and 10 specific recommendations for three target audiences: homeowners, builder...

Air pollution is among the highest contributors to mortality worldwide, especially in urban areas. During spring 2020, many countries enacted social distancing measures in order to slow down the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A particularly drastic measure, the “lockdown”, urged people to stay at home and thereby prevent new COVID-19 infections during...

Poor ventilation and polluting cooking fuels in low-income homes cause high exposure, yet relevant global studies are limited. We assessed exposure to in-kitchen particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) employing similar instrumentation in 60 low-income homes across 12 cities: Dhaka (Bangladesh); Chennai (India); Nanjing (China); Medellín (Colombia); Sã...

Chemical characterization and source apportionment of PM10 and PM2.5 were carried out for two different elevations (lower elevation (LE) ~ 5–10 m and higher elevation (HE) ~ 30–45 m) at four different locations representing urban background, city center, upwind, and downwind of the Delhi city during January 2017–March 2017. The 24-h average PM10 an...

The PM10 and PM2.5 source apportionment and health risk assessment were performed for two different elevations (lower elevation (LE) ∼5–10 m and higher elevation (HE) ∼30–45 m) at four different locations of Delhi city during January 2017–March 2017. The measured 24-h average PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations at different locations were found between 1...

Car microenvironments significantly contribute to the daily pollution exposure of commuters, yet health and socioeconomic studies focused on in-car exposure are rare. This study aims to assess the relationship between air pollution levels and socioeconomic indicators (fuel prices, city-specific GDP, road density, the value of statistical life (VSL)...

Increasing emissions from sources such as construction and burning of biomass from crop residues, roadside and municipal solid waste have led to a rapid increase in the atmospheric concentrations of fine particulate matter (≤2.5µm; PM2.5) over many Indian cities. Analyses of their chemical profiles are important for receptor models to accurately es...

Modelling photochemical pollutants, such as ground level ozone (O3), nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), in urban terrain was proven to be cardinal, chronophagous and complex. We built linear regression and random forest regression models using 4-years (2015-2018; hourly-averaged) observations for forecasting O3, NO and NO2 levels for two...

The pollutants and its effects on human health are now a major issue around the world. The impact of traffic and the resulting vehicle emissions has come to the forefront. Particulate matter is one among six criteria pollutants and air pollution related to particulate matter is now becoming a serious problem in developing as well as developed count...

This chapter discusses indoor and outdoor air pollutants while focusing on their sources, standards and the exposure of living beings through different possible pathways. The major outdoor air pollutants comprise particulates (PM10 and PM2.5) and gases including NOx, ozone, volatile organic compounds etc. Most of these outdoor air pollutants enter...

Mathematical models are used for all aspects of air quality management, i.e., from event forecasting to long-term planning. Several approaches have been widely used in modelling of urban air pollution. These modelling approaches include deterministic, statistical, hybrid of deterministic and artificial neural networks. This chapter provides brief i...

Urban air quality is a critical issue in both developed and developing countries. In the recent past, the governments in both the developed and developing countries have initiated several strategies and action plans to address the urban air quality issues. This chapter discusses the principles of air quality management, framework for air quality ma...

Urban air quality is highly dynamic and it is largely controlled by micrometeorological conditions as well as anthropogeinic emissions. The unprecedented growth of urban centres, industries and vehicles population have resulted in serious air quality problems in several countries. In this chapter we briefly discuss urban air pollution, types of air...

Air quality is typically registered by established systems of high-precision devices in order to monitor compliance with limit values. Nevertheless, these existing air quality measuring techniques have limitations: they cannot observe spatiotemporal variations in high resolution, provide data about target-specific monitoring, personal exposure, rea...

Cars are a commuting lifeline worldwide, despite contributing significantly to air pollution. This is the first global assessment on air pollution exposure in cars across ten cities: Dhaka (Bangladesh); Chennai (India); Guangzhou (China); Medellín (Colombia); São Paulo (Brazil); Cairo (Egypt); Sulaymaniyah (Iraq); Addis Ababa (Ethiopia); Blantyre (...

Air pollution is among the highest contributors to mortality worldwide, especially in urban areas. During spring 2020, many countries enacted social distancing measures in order to slow down the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. A particularly drastic measure, the "lockdown", urged people to stay at home and thereby prevent new Covid-19 infections. In tur...

A key challenge in controlling Delhi’s air quality is a lack of clear understanding of the impacts of emissions from the surrounding National Capital Region (NCR). Our objectives are to understand the limitations of publicly available data, its utility to determine pollution sources across Delhi-NCR and establish seasonal profiles of chemically act...

Rapid urbanization along with industrial growth is one of the major causes of elevated air pollution levels in urban areas of low and middle income countries (LMICs). They are further associated with adverse health impacts within urban ecosystems. In order to manage and control deteriorating urban air quality, an efficient and effective urban air q...

Non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) are associated with various respiratory, cardiovascular and cancerous diseases. Emission of NMVOCs from petrol distribution centres in urban areas is one of the major sources. This study focuses on the estimation of emission load of NMVOCs from petrol distribution centre in one of the metropolitan cit...

PM2.5 sampling was conducted at a kerbside location in Delhi city for summer and winter seasons, to evaluate the effect of PM2.5 and its chemical components on the visibility impairment. The PM2.5 concentrations were observed to be higher than the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) indicating poor air quality. The chemical constituents...

Air pollution in Delhi city is an alarming level from last few years. The major challenge for the policy makers is to reduce/manage the elevated air pollution level and related acute and chronic health impacts. Air pollution continues to be a nightmare for Delhiites despite implementation of several diversified source interventions. However, the ef...

Increasing urban air pollution level in Indian cities is one of the major concerns for policy makers due to its impact on public health. The growth in population and increase in associated motorised road transport demand is one of the major causes of increasing air pollution in most urban areas along with other sources e.g., road dust, construction...

One of the major drawbacks of conventional air quality models is their inability in accurately predicting extreme air pollutant concentrations. Hybrid modelling is one of the techniques that estimates/predicts the ‘entire range’ of the distribution of pollutant concentrations by combining the deterministic based models (capable in predicting averag...

Ground level ozone (GLO), a secondary pollutant having adverse impact on human health, ecology, and agricultural productivity, apart from being a major contributor to global warming, has been a subject matter of several studies. In order to identify appropriate strategies to control GLO levels, accurate assessment and prediction is essential, for w...

The odd-even car trial scheme, which reduced car traffic between 08.00 to 20.00 h daily, was applied from 1–15 January 2016 (winter scheme, WS) and 15–30 April 2016 (summer scheme, SS). The daily average PM2.5 and PM10 exceeded national standards, with highest concentrations (313 µg m–3 and 639 µg m–3, respectively) during winter and lowest (53 µg...

Dispersion models for predicting particulate matter (PM) concentrations are essential for assessing ambient concentration levels at locations without sampling/monitoring equipment for making future projections and for investigating the potential of different air pollutant mitigation policies. In view of the many different sources and the diverse ch...

This study simulates ground level ozone concentrations in a heavily populated and polluted National Capital Region (NCR- Delhi) in India. Multi-sectoral emission inventories of ozone precursors are prepared at a high resolution of 4 × 4 km² for the whole region covering the capital city of Delhi along with other surrounding towns and rural regions...

The occurrence of extreme events of air pollutant concentrations at urban hotspots is a routine phenomenon, particularly during the winter season. However, extreme events of reactive air pollutants are more frequent during the summer season. The assessment of air pollution extreme events will provide a platform to formulate an effective and efficie...

The chapter reviews the studies on source apportionment conducted in the Indian sub-continent focussing mainly on respirable particulate matter including their sources and characteristics. The receptor models used in identification of major sources of respirable particulate matter and their fractions are also comprehensively described. Among the co...

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are one of the main pollutants of concern when considering indoor air quality. Modern building materials used in the manufacture of wall panels, coatings and insulations are among the primary sources of VOCs that may affect adversely occupant health. Measurement of VOCs is a complex and time-consuming process in te...

This paper analyzes the statistical behavior of the ground level ozone concentrations (GLO) observed at a major traffic intersection in Delhi. Five sets of data, i.e. summer (May to July, high solar radiation data), winter (November to January, low solar radiation data), spring (March to April), autumn (September to October), and the entire year ha...

Swelling urban populations and increased concentration of automobile traffic in and around cities have resulted in severe air pollution, threatening human health and undermining the productivity of the urban population. Air quality modelling is one of the important components of urban air quality management (UAQM). This paper contains comparative p...

Air quality model (AQM) is an essential tool for management of air quality in near field region of an industrial complex. Model validation study using site specific input data can boost the consistency on accuracy of model’s performance for air quality management. This study describes the validation of CALPUFF and AERMOD for assessment of NOx conce...

Urban air quality management plan (UAQMP) is an effective and efficient tool employed in managing acceptable urban air quality. However, the UAQM practices are specific to a country’s needs and requirements. Majority of the developed countries have full–fledged UAQMP with a regulatory management framework. However, developing countries are still wo...

The concentrations of twenty five heavy metals adsorbed to fine fraction of particulate matter, PM2.5 (d ≤ 2.5 µm) have been experimentally analysed at a sampling site located at the kerbside along a National Highway in Delhi city, India. The sampling has been carried out for 12-hour using Ecotech Intruments, APM550. The PM2.5 has been collected on...

Air quality models (AQMs) play an important role in prediction and forecasting of air pollutant concentrations which are essential components for urban air quality management. Applicability of advanced AQM like AERMOD is well established in developed world where sufficient input data are available. However, it is limited in developing countries due...

Urban air quality has deteriorated in last few decades in the mega cities of both developed and developing countries. Many mathematical models have been widely used as prediction tool for urban air quality management in developed countries. However, applications of these models are limited in developing countries including India due to lack of suff...

The concentrations of metals adsorbed to fine fraction of particulate matter, PM2.5 (d ≤ 2.5 m) was determined at a site located on a National Highway in Delhi city. 24-hour samples have been collected separately for day and night on 47-mm PTFE filters using high volume PM2.5 sampler for the month of November 2013 on alternative days. The collecte...

Studying PM and NOx interactions in the kitchen indoors is essential in view of their synergistic impact on human respiratory health. Simultaneous emission of PM and NOx and their characteristics (OC EC fractions) have been studied, separately during frying and roasting activities and under different ventilation conditions, in 13 hostel kitchens of...

Effect of exposure to pollutants generated due to fuel combustion and cooking activities on subjects of different microenvironments has been assessed by carrying out health survey using questionnaire (to find morbidity to respiratory symptoms) and by conducting spirometry. Significant increase in prevalence of cough and impairment of lung functions...

Prediction of air quality is an important component of any air quality management programme. Broadly, two approaches are used to predict the ambient air quality - the deterministic and the statistical approach, with each approach having its own merits and demerits. While the models based on the deterministic approach accurately predict the concentr...

Urban air pollution is a matter of concern due to its adverse consequences for human health and the environment. The dynamics of economic growth, industrialization and urbanization coupled with population growth are primarily responsible for air pollution. Ambient particulate matter pollution itself ranked 4th attributing burden of disease for East...

A study on indoor–outdoor RSPM (PM10, PM2.5 and PM1.0) mass concentration monitoring has been carried out at a classroom of a naturally ventilated school building located near an urban roadway in Delhi City. The monitoring has been planned for a year starting from August 2006 till August 2007, including weekdays (Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and w...

T his article was originally published in a journal by OMICS Publishing Group, and the attached copy is provided by OMICS Publishing Group for the author's benefi t and for the benefi t of the author's institution, for commercial/research/educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specifi c co...

Deterioration of air quality in Indian megacities (Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata) is much more significant than that observed in the megacities of developed countries. Densely packed high-rise buildings restrict the self-cleaning capabilities of Indian megacities. Also, the ever growing number of on-road vehicles, resuspension of the dust, and anthropog...

The organic matter of street dust is considered as one of the causes for high human mortality rate. To understand the association, the street dust samples were collected from four different localities (industrial, residential, residential-commercial, and commercial) situated in the greater Delhi area of India. The loss-on-ignition method was used t...

Study of indoor air quality (IAQ) has received attention of the researchers and policy makers over the last several years due to its affiliation with the adverse health effects and occupants’ discomfort. This article focuses on the importance and need of IAQ studies in Indian rural and urban indoor environments. A number of questions in this contex...

Parallel measurements of non-respirable suspended particulates (NRSP) and respirable suspended particulates (RSP) were conducted at four sites in Delhi, India from October-November, 2000. The organic matter (OM), crustal matter, and soluble fraction were determined through a series of experiments and obtained in the data, which now constitutes the...

Air quality modelling plays an important role in formulating air pollution control and management strategies by providing guidelines for better and more efficient air quality planning. Several air quality dispersion models are used to evaluate the urban air quality. The performance and efficiency of an air quality model are mainly depends upon the...

Urban air pollution poses a significant threat to human health, the environment and the quality of life of people throughout the world. In the United Kingdom 103 areas have been declared as local air quality management areas (LAQMA). While in India, 72 cities have been identified as cities having poor air quality/non-attainment area, i.e., the air...

An ambient air quality sampling program was implemented to collect baseline concentrations of respirable suspended particulates (RSP, PM10), non-respirable suspended particulates (NRSP) & fine suspended particulates (FSP, PM2.5) over 6-weeks period & 24-hr. average concentrations were calculated from samples collected at 4 different stations in Del...

Several attempts have been made worldwide to understand the gravity of the air pollution problem. Researchers and policy-makers have been trying to understand it through scientific, regulatory and non-regulatory options. This study reports on the applicability and performance of some well known air quality dispersion models like AERMOD and ISCST3 m...

Recent economic development in many Asian and European countries has shown an increase in vehicle kilometre travel (VKT) in many cities, which has resulted in an increase in the vehicular pollution levels. In particular, particulate matter (PM) concentrations emitted from vehicles are at alarming levels in most of the cities of the world. Therefore...

Air borne dust found in ambient, domestic, and occupational environments has been associated with a wide range of adverse health effects. The purpose of the present article is to describe the airborne dust pollution that includes the particulate matter and aerosol. Special focus has been given to the biological fraction of the dust in indoor enviro...

Biomass fuels are frequently used as a source of domestic energy in developing countries that may cause indoor air pollution. This study presents indoor and outdoor combustion pollutants (CO and NOx) and respirable particulate matter-RSPM (PM10, PM2.5 and PM1.0) concentrations measured during winter and summer seasons in 8 homes in Delhi, India. CO...

Assessment of indoor air quality (IAQ) in classrooms of school buildings is of prime concern due to its potential effects on student’s health and performance as they spend a substantial amount of their time (6–7 h per day) in schools. A number of airborne contaminants may be present in urban school environment. However, respirable suspended particu...

The chapter on the IAQ monitoring and modeling protocol is a check list for establishing an IAQ study protocol in urban school buildings that includes sampling, monitoring, analysis and prediction. After formulation of the hypothesis or aim of the IAQ investigation, all relevant variables and co-variables should be identified. The list of items to...

Recent strategies for air pollution control in Delhi have largely neglected the emission reduction measures from thermal power plants (TPPs), which are the second most polluting sources. The present study investigates how the ambient air quality of Delhi would improve if the World Bank emission guidelines (WBEG) for the TPPs were to be implemented....

This study was primarily initiated to understand the consistently moderate levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in Indian cities in spite of increasing NOx emissions. The research objective was to understand NO<sub align="”right”"> 3 </sub><sup align="”right”"> ? </sup> formation as a NOx function, and other atmospheric constituents. For this purpose, a...

This paper describes development of neuro-fuzzy models to predict 1-h average carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations. The neuro-fuzzy models are developed at two urban air quality control regions in the Delhi city, India—one, a typical traffic intersection (i.e., Income Tax Office, ITO); and second, an urban straight roadway (i.e., Siri Fort). ITO mod...

Textile industry wastewater treatment is a cause for concern due to its intense color and high COD, which makes it difficult to treat it by conventional treatment options. Also, many of the dyes used in the industry fall under the category of hazardous wastes and are known to be toxic to microorganisms and aquatic life forms. An experimental study...

The present study aims at investigating the indoor air quality (IAQ) in selected households in the urban slums, as well as a control site, in Delhi, the capital city of India. The study includes assessments of associated respiratory health effects and Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) on the occupants living in inefficiently designed houses with poor ve...

The achievement of local air quality management goals in densely populated built-up urban areas often requires short-term air quality plans or emission management policies. Vehicular pollution modelling is an effective tool in managing the vehicular exhaust emissions in urban environments. In the recent past, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based v...

Dust generation and its dispersion has been a major concern in ambient air quality modelling of opencast mines. Various mining activities release particulate matter and gaseous pollutants such as CO, NO X, SO 2 etc. Among all these pollutants, suspended particulate matter (SPM) and respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) are of major concern...

The atmospheric dispersion modelling of respirable particulates particularly PM 10 around the opencast coal mines is significantly influenced by micro-meteorological, topographical and thermal effects. The opencast coal mining operations generate particulate matter of different sizes mostly PM 10 which cause environmental and health hazards to the...

This study estimates minimum marginal health benefits (morbidity reduction only) of air pollution control and total health benefits arising from regulatory intervention regarding the adoption of the World Bank emission guidelines (WBEG) for thermal power plants (TPPs) in Delhi. The Industrial Source Complex-Short-Term Version-3 (ISCST3) model has b...

This paper presents a method for constructing a membership function (MF) for the fuzzy sets that expert systems deal with. This paper introduces a Bezier curve-based mechanism for constructing MFs of convex normal fuzzy sets. The mechanism can fit any given data set with a minimum level of discrepancy. In the absence of data, the mechanism can be i...

Unlabelled: The present study aims at investigating the indoor air quality (IAQ) in selected households in one of the urban slums i.e. the Nizamuddin slums in Delhi, the capital city of India. The study includes investigations and assessments on associated health effects on the occupants living in inefficiently designed houses having poor ventilat...

This paper describes the development of the univariate time-series models for forecasting 1-h average carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations during the critical (winter) period. The CO data covering the period from 1st November to 31st December 1999, has been used for the development of Box–Jenkins models at two Air Quality Control Regions (AQCRs) – t...

https://youtu.be/sx8BQB7voKo?si=E7POM-RLSxAxbAlY https://youtu.be/a036RKUgbRM?si=56AZr5HoGzSl3zw7

This paper describes the development of artificial neural network (ANN) based carbon monoxide (CO) persistence (ANNCOP) models to forecast 8-h average CO concentration using 1-h maximum predicted CO data for the critical (winter) period (November-March). The models have been developed for three 8-h groupings of 10 P.M. to 6 A.M., 6 A.M., to 2 P.M....

Air pollution is one of the major environmental problems in India, affecting health of thousands of 'urban' residents residing in mega cities. The need of the day is to evolve an 'effective' and 'efficient' air quality management plan (AQMP) encompassing the essential 'key players' and 'stakeholders.' This paper describes the formulation of an AQMP...

IAQ is an emerging issue of concern to building managers, operators, designers and occupants. Indoor air quality has attributed to numerous rationales. The primary reason is to ensure that workers are able to work in a comfortable, healthy environment. Increasing publicity and the resulting public awareness has led to the building community to beco...

The present research proposes the local urban air quality management plan which combines two different modelling approaches (hybrid model) and possesses an improved predictive ability including the 'probabilistic exceedances over norms' and their 'frequency of occurrences' and so termed, herein, as episodic-urban air quality management plan (e-UAQM...

Recently, airtight envelope system has become popular in the design of office buildings to reduce heating and cooling loads. Maintaining allowable indoor air quality (IAQ) for such airtight buildings totally depends on mechanical ventilation systems. Subsequently, poor operation of the ventilation system in such office buildings causes ineffective...

An air quality sampling program was designed and implemented to collect the baseline concentrations of respirable suspended particulates (RSP = PM10), non-respirable suspended particulates (NRSP) and fine suspended particulates (FSP = PM2.5). Over a three-week period, a 24-h average concentrations were calculated from the samples collected at an in...

Air pollutant concentrations are essentially random variables and can be well described by statistical distribution models. The statistical distribution models are, therefore, useful tools in predicting the distribution of air pollutant concentrations. The statistical distributional form, fitting to the concentrations data, is based upon several fa...

Vehicles' 'wakes' are generated as a result of vehicular movements. They are one of the dominant factors in dispersing the pollutants in 'calm' meteorological conditions when wind velocity is <1 m/sec (Chock, 1978). They are used as a wind-speed-correction factor in several air quality models considering the effects of traffic movements on the poll...

Measurements of SO 2 , NO 2, and Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) of indoor air and correlation with outdoor air have been determined in an office of multistory mechanically ventilated building. The objective of the study was to evaluate the diversity of SO 2 , NO 2 and SPM inside building and penetration of pollutants, mostly found outside, from...