KATHMANDU, Jan 16: Air quality in the Kathmandu Valley reported a PM2.5 reading of 151.36 µg/m3 on average on Saturday.
As fewer vehicles plied the streets of the country’s capital city owing to the weekly off, the hourly PM 2.5 reading has slightly gone down. The highest reading (226.11 µg/m3) measured between 9 AM and 10 AM, however, surpassed the worst data recorded on Thursday (218.58 μg/m³ in the morning between 10 and 11).
Kathmandu tops global air pollution chart again
The air quality in the country’s most populated city started improving from 10 AM onwards and witnessed the lowest PM 2.5 reading of 110.44 μg/m³ between 1PM and 2 PM.
The data collected from various pollution monitoring stations installed at 17 different places in the Valley shows that the dust particles in the air are far more than that of government-set guidelines of 40 μg/m³. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that PM2.5 reading in healthy air should not exceed 25 μg/m³.
