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 12years (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 (20g/m(3)), while 19% of the locations were in compliance with the Indian air quality standards for PM10 (60g/m(3)). 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.