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10/10/2016 Openly Burning Garbage Around Agra is Discolouring the Taj Mahal
http://thewire.in/71904/tajmahaldiscolourationpollution/ 1/6
Openly BurningGarbage AroundAgra is Discolouringthe Taj MahalBY T.V. PADMA ON 09/10/2016 • LEAVE A COMMENT
The ndings should shake Agra out of itscomplacency, especially if it prides itself as beinghome to an iconic monument that draws millionsevery year.
ENVIRONMENT
10/10/2016 Openly Burning Garbage Around Agra is Discolouring the Taj Mahal
http://thewire.in/71904/tajmahaldiscolourationpollution/ 2/6
The Taj Mahal. Credit: 8838/Flickr, CC BY 2.0
Burning city garbage in the open is increasingly discolouring India’siconic Taj Mahal – a problem that does not require technological fixesas much as more efficient waste management, new research shows.
The white marble of the Taj Mahal keeps getting bombarded bypolluting emissions. The 262nd Report on Effects of Pollution on Taj,submitted to the Rajya Sabha in 2015, noted that despite previousinterventions to reduce pollution in Agra’s vicinity, the haze anddarkening persist. Previous measures to curb the impact of local airpollution around the Taj Mahal included restricting vehicles near thecomplex, closing over 200 enterprises in Agra, requiring iron foundriesto install scrubbers and filters on their smokestacks, prohibiting newpolluting enterprises from being built within a defined buffer zonearound the mausoleum and, most recently, banning cow dung cakeburning as cooking fuel.
10/10/2016 Openly Burning Garbage Around Agra is Discolouring the Taj Mahal
http://thewire.in/71904/tajmahaldiscolourationpollution/ 3/6
An ignored aspect is the practice of burning garbage, or municipal solidwaste (MSW), openly – a practice rampant across Indian cities. Its roleas well as that of largescale burning of crop wastes in north India inwinter is increasingly coming under the scanner for their contributingto air pollution.
Moreover, the rapid growth of the city of Agra together with limitedMSW management infrastructure has resulted in less effective wastemanagement that leaves large volumes of trash accumulating in thestreets. This is from a report by an IndoAmerican team of scientists,published in the latest issue of the journal Environmental ResearchLetters.
MSW is openly and frequently burned on roadsides and in residentialand commercial areas in Agra – as it is done across India. Burninggarbage openly leads to the emission and deposition of small, pollutingparticles, technically called particulate matter (PM), all over the place –from monuments and buildings to deep inside people’s lungs. TheCentral Pollution Control Board of India estimates that MSWburningcontributes between 5% and 11% of primary particulate emissions fromsources within cities.
The study looked at emissions from burning of MSW and dungcakes.“MSW burning was found to be the main contributor,” SachchidaTripathi, a professor at the department of civil engineering and Centrefor Environmental Science and Engineering, IITKanpur, and one of thestudy authors, told The Wire.
Openly burning MSW and dung cakes tends to be more concentrated inareas of poorer populations, which worsens exposures to those moreeconomically vulnerable. “By just managing garbage better, one cansave hundreds of lives every year. It is not a technological problem; it isa purely managerial problem,” Tripathi said.
India lacks a precise quantification of emissions from specific sources –also known as source apportionment studies. The latest research buildson previous studies on the discolouration of the Taj by Tripathi’steam as well as those by Michael Bergin, affiliated with the school of
10/10/2016 Openly Burning Garbage Around Agra is Discolouring the Taj Mahal
http://thewire.in/71904/tajmahaldiscolourationpollution/ 4/6
civil and environmental engineering at Duke University, NorthCarolina.
The studies analysed ambient PM samples collected over a oneyearperiod from Agra, from November 2011 to endJune 2012. They foundrelatively high concentrations of lightabsorbing particles that couldpotentially discolour the Taj Mahal’s marble surfaces, including blackcarbon, the lightabsorbing organic carbon (brown carbon) and dust.
The studies found deposition of fine PM, also called PM 2.5because these particles are less than 2.5 microns in size, at the TajMahal – and that burning MSW was a major contributor. Analyses ofparticles deposited on surrogate marble surfaces at the Taj Mahal alsoindicated that a large fraction of the outer Taj Mahal’s surfaces werecovered with particles that contain both carboncontaining componentsand dust. The results indicate that deposited light absorbing dust andcarbonaceous particles, both black and brown carbon from the burningof fossil fuels and biomass, were responsible for surface discolouration.
“This new study shows that the burning of solid waste was contributing12 times more to the Taj Mahal discolouration than dung cakes beforethe recent ban on burning cow dung cakes for cooking,” says PrakashBhave, scientist at International Centre for Integrated MountainDevelopment (ICIMOD), Kathmandu. Major efforts to slow down thediscolouration began in 1996, with the closure of a nearby coalfiredpower plant, the local coke industries and the forced relocation of 450brick kilns, points out Bhave. Recent efforts by the Agra administrationincluded a crackdown on pethamakers as well as a local ban on theburning of cowdung cakes for cooking.
Recent research conducted by ICIMOD in collaboration with a team ofUS scientists also indicated that the open burning of solid waste is oneof the most potent sources of PM 2.5 in the region. “On a per kilogrambasis, wasteburning emits far more PM 2.5 than diesel engines,motorcycles, brick kilns, cropresidue burning or cooking withinefficient stoves and fuels,” said Bhave. Having recognised that wasteburning is a difficult habit to change, ICIMOD is focusing on spreadingawareness, too, using short films and videos.
10/10/2016 Openly Burning Garbage Around Agra is Discolouring the Taj Mahal
http://thewire.in/71904/tajmahaldiscolourationpollution/ 5/6
The latest findings should shake the Agra administration out of itscomplacency, especially if it prides itself as being home to an iconicWorld Heritage Monument that draws millions of tourists every year.The worsening air pollution and haze in the IndoGangetic plain spreadacross the Himalayas and have farreaching consequences, includinghealth and impact on tourismdependent economies such as Nepal, sayexperts from ICIMOD.
Categories: Environment (http://thewire.in/category/science/environment/)
Tagged as: Agra (http://thewire.in/tag/agra/), air pollution (http://thewire.in/tag/airpollution/),burning (http://thewire.in/tag/burning/), Central Pollution Control Board(http://thewire.in/tag/centralpollutioncontrolboard/), CPCB (http://thewire.in/tag/cpcb/), dung cake(http://thewire.in/tag/dungcake/), Environmental Research Letters(http://thewire.in/tag/environmentalresearchletters/), fine particular matter(http://thewire.in/tag/fineparticularmatter/), ICIMOD (http://thewire.in/tag/icimod/), marble(http://thewire.in/tag/marble/), MSW (http://thewire.in/tag/msw/), municipal solid waste(http://thewire.in/tag/municipalsolidwaste/), PM 2.5 (http://thewire.in/tag/pm25/), Taj Mahal(http://thewire.in/tag/tajmahal/), TV Padma (http://thewire.in/tag/tvpadma/)
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10/10/2016 Openly Burning Garbage Around Agra is Discolouring the Taj Mahal
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