‘AQI over 400 poses serious health risks’: Delhi-NCR’s air quality finds mention in new NCERT Class 8 text

Stating that pollution and waste are also on the rise, it adds: “The National Capital Region (NCR), for example, frequently records Air Quality Index (AQI) levels over 400, far above the safe limit of 50, posing serious health risks to the residents.”

It also explains what AQI is: “Numerical scale used to report air quality. It includes data on various pollutants like particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10), carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, etc., into a single, easy-to-understand value. The higher the AQI, the greater the level of air pollution and the greater the risk to public health.”

The rest of the chapter has sections on planning of cities, population density, and how cities become centres of economic activities.

The chapter on urban landscape is under the theme ‘Economic Life Around Us’. While the NCERT has earlier had separate textbooks for history, political science, and geography, the new set of books that are being released covers all three themes in two books—Exploring Society: India and Beyond (part 1 and part 2)–which have been developed for Social Science.

The latest textbook’s section on “corruption in the judiciary” drew flak from Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Wednesday, who said he “will not allow anyone to defame the institution”.

The new books are being developed in line with the National Education Policy 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023. Books for Classes 1 to 8 have been developed so far. The old books for history, geography, and social and political life were first released in 2008, with revisions in later years.

The old Class 8 book on ‘Resources and Development’ does not mention AQI or the air pollution problem in the NCR. Old textbooks have mentioned air pollution, but not with a specific mention of the NCR and AQI.

A Class 10 Geography textbook, first published in 2006, for instance, has a chapter on ‘Manufacturing Industries’, with a section on industrial pollution and environmental degradation. It describes air pollution as being caused by “the presence of a high proportion of undesirable gases, such as sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide.”

In the context of industrial pollution, it says that “smoke is emitted by chemical and paper factories, brick kilns, refineries and smelting plants, and burning of fossil fuels in big and small factories that ignore pollution norms,” adding that “air pollution adversely affects human health, animals, plants, buildings and the atmosphere as a whole.”