Monitoring particulate matter in India: recent trends and future outlook

Air quality remains a significant environmental health challenge in India, and large sections of the population live in areas with poor ambient air quality. This article presents a summary of the regulatory monitoring landscape in India, and includes a discussion on measurement methods and other available government data on air pollution. Coarse particulate matter (PM10) concentration data from the national regulatory monitoring network for 12 years (2004–2015) were systematically analyzed to determine broad trends. Less than 1% of all PM10 measurements (11 out of 4789) were found to meet the annual average WHO Air Quality Guideline (20 μg/m3), while 19% of the locations were in compliance with the Indian air quality standards for PM10 (60 μg/m3). Further efforts are necessary to improve measurement coverage and quality including the use of hybrid monitoring systems, harmonized approaches for sampling and data analysis, and easier data accessibility.