This Diwali the decibel demon was back in West Bengal with a vengeance. Although Kolkata Police tried hard to check the use of banned crackers,placed air monitoring vans and deployed thousands of additional policemen,the city-dwellers went on firing noisy crackers. The police cracked down on the offenders and arrested more than 1000 people from the city for firing high-decibel crackers. A senior West Bengal Pollution Control Board (WBPCB) official said,We put in all efforts to retain the low-decibel celebrations but people went on using banned crackers. We will prepare our report on the air and sound pollution level on the day. To check air pollution caused by bursting of crackers,this year PCB had decided to station mobile air pollution monitoring van at north Kolkatas Bidhan Chandra Sishu Hospital. Last year,many of the children admitted in the hospital had fallen sick because of high pollution. So this time we arranged pollution monitoring van near the hospital. Besides,we monitored the air and sound pollution level in the city, said a PCB official.
