Delhi’s first smog tower will start working at Lajpat Nagar central market from Friday. The 20-feet-tall tower is fitted with exhaust fans to suck in polluted air and can remove up to 80 per cent of the particulate matter (PM 2.5 and PM10) the primary pollutant in the air in Delhi. Due to high pollution levels in the national capital (Delhi), the Supreme Court had in November 2019 asked the Centre and the Delhi government to come up with a road map on installing smog towers in the National Capital Region (NCR) to combat air pollution. The smog towers were to be installed on the lines of China, which has experimented with this technology. This is the pilot project which has been proposed to consider the efficacy of smog tower and this is being undertaken by the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-Bombay) in collaboration with IIT-Delhi and the University of Minnesota. The US-based institution has helped build a smog tower in Xian, northern China.
According to the Lajpat Nagar trader association members, the tower has been installed in an open area above a covered drain in the market by the trader’s body with the help of east Delhi MP Gautam Gambhir.
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