Hassan: The district has a good reason to be happy about. the recently reeleased World Health Organisation’s report not only points that Hassan Town is the least polluted along the three cities in the state, others being Bengaluru and Davangere, but also that it is the third least polluted city in the country.
The detailed WHO report reveals that Tezpur in Assam stands first as the least polluted city, followed by Pathanamthitta in Kerela and then Hassan in Karnataka, among the 122 Indian cities considered for WHO’s study on air pollution.
Hassan, the city which had bagged the third position in the previous survey declared in 2014, retains its position. The study was conducted in 2,973 cities across the globe, including 122 in India.
As per the WHO guidelines, the permissible limit in case of PM10 is 20 g/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre of air) and PM2.5 is 10 g/m3. All cities of India considered for the study have recorded the pollution level above the permissible limit.
In Tezpur, the concentration of particulate matter (dust) with the annual mean PM 10 was found to be 11 g/m3 and annual mean PM2.5 was 6 g/m3. In the case of Hassan, the annual mean of PM10 was 36 g/m3 and PM2.5 was 19 g/m3. In Pathanamthitta, the annual mean PM10 was 23 g/m3 and annual mean PM2.5 was 12 g/m3.
Kollam in Kerala has emerged the fourth city with minimum pollution. In Kollam, annual mean of PM10 is 41 g/m3 and PM2.5 is 22. In the study released in 2014, Kollam was in the second place.
