Should not one need education to report a scientific revelation and deserves wisdom to portray any technical finding. The media outlets in Guwahati are often found to be happy to defame the governments in Dispur and New Delhi. Doing so, they also defame their own place and the people. The issue came for discussion as an air quality monitoring body (IQAir) revealed that Guwahati emerged as one of the most polluted cities in the world. Many jumped into the content of ‘World Air Quality Report 2023’ and started making voluminous reports that the pre-historic city has turned out to be an unhealthy place.
But they forgot to add the information that the same privately owned company also manufactures air purifiers. Without consulting any local scientific agency, the group of editor-journalists came to the conclusion as if it was revealed by an acclaimed international agency. Probably it’s time to make them enlightened before dealing with such scientific parameters. Otherwise, they will continue trying to score personal political vendetta with a factually wrong input. And the outcome will be the rapid rejection of those media personalities by the new generation of news consumers.
No doubt, Guwahati is a polluted city, but the question that surfaced- if it contained the second highest polluted air across the Asian region? Amazingly, the list put Begusarai of Bihar at the top. For hours the ‘manufactured news’ rolled from newspapers, news channels to alternate media outlets and it created a panicky situation among the Guwahatians. Finally the local pollution control agency came out with a strong argument denouncing the IQAir findings. The Pollution Control Board, Assam (PCBA) also assured that Guwahati was yet to arrive at the reported position in air quality index.
According to Wikipedia, IQAir is a private company on environmental technology based in Goldach of Switzerland. Founded in 1963, the air quality technology company produces air purifiers. It specializes in protection against airborne pollutants, developing air quality monitoring & air cleaning products, and also operates AirVisual, a real-time air quality information platform. As of February 2020, it had around 500 employees worldwide, 150 of them in China, and its most important markets were Asia and North America. As of 2015, IQAir was a family-owned company and it did not publish concrete information about its revenue or profits.
As the unauthentic news spread to common people, the PCBA issued an official statement saying that it was a misleading report in regards to air quality of Guwahati. The agency reported PM 2.5 concentration in Guwahati for the year 2023 as high as 105.4 µg/m3, which is more than Delhi (92.7 µg/m3). These misleading reports are causing panic among the people in Assam and the PCBA clarified that there was no need to panic as the air pollution level (PM 2.5 concentration) in Guwahati is absolutely under control (52.8 µg/m3 in 2023). The average PM 2.5 concentration in Guwahati city for 2022 was 52.61 µg/m3. All this data contradicts the report of IQAir, whose data collection procedures are not disclosed.
Assam government under the National Clean Air Program (NCAP) has been implementing various action plans to improve the ambient air quality in Guwahati along with Nagaon, Nalbari, Sivasagar and Silchar. Various stakeholders (government departments & agencies) help to implement the NCAP action plans which helps in maintaining air quality in populous city in terms of average PM 2.5 concentration in 2023 (52.8 µg/m3) and 2022 (52.61 µg/m3). Probably, the poor quality air (as portrayed by the IQAir report and subsequently highlighted by various print and electronic media outlets) would have a far-reaching manifestation in normal life and activities of Guwahatians, which is not observed.
IQAir was communicated by NewsBharatiNE for its response five days back, but nothing has come from the Swish company till date.
Misreporting Guwahati: Polluted media’s way
