Delhi covered with dust as road repairs take their toll

Driving on the Ring Road near Bhikaji Cama Place is never a pleasant experience — the area is an intersection for two major roads (the other being Africa Avenue), and as a result, is choked with traffic at any given time of the day.
What has exacerbated matters is repairs being carried across large swaths of this arterial road, including near Bhikaji Cama Place, that has left much of the surrounding area under a thick shroud of dust — a combination of the particles kicked up by traffic on the broken roads and those emanating from construction material lying uncovered.
Such a scene is an all-too-familiar sight in many parts of Delhi — the Outer Ring Road from Panchsheel Park to Greater Kailash in the south; Malka Ganj in the north; Anand Vihar and Karkardooma in the east; and Punjabi Bagh and Raja Garden in the west, to name a few.
The increase in dust comes at a time when Delhi’s pollution levels have reached the “poor” zone and are expected to worsen as the annual cocktail of toxic factors — farm fires, calm winds and festival season traffic combine.
The Delhi government’s Public Works Department (PWD) on Saturday said they are trying to rush through the repair work necessitated by monsoons rains that eroded the tarmac. But measures to check dust are few and far in between. A spot check revealed that despite vehicle-mounted mist guns in place along the Ring Road and Outer Ring Road — as prescribed by the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) for any ongoing work in Delhi —hardly any are used.
Instead, a thin layer of dust covers surrounding areas — trees, bus standards and civic furniture.
Commuter woes, misery for residents
Rahul Sharma, an IT professional who drove on the Bhikaji Cama Place stretch of the Ring Road on Saturday, said the dust severely affected visibility. “You could see the clouds of dust on the road, and even though I had my car windows up, I felt like I could smell the dust inside. If this repair work goes on like this, our daily commute will become a gas chamber,” he said.
Ashok Randhawa, the president of the Sarojini Nagar mini market traders’ association, said that multiple residents in the area, especially senior citizens, are taking ill due to the excessive dust. “The government had promised timely inspection of construction sites but no one is following any rules here, nor are there any inspections,” Randhawa said, adding that people travelling to and from the market have to cover their faces.
“Vehicles carrying construction materials are not covered, and the people responsible for sprinkling water do not do so. The condition here is very bad and even the clothes we hang up in our shops get dusty within minutes,” he said.
Residents living along the Outer Ring Road said they have been grappling with similar problems since the rains ended late in September.
“Pollution is at its peak, as is usual during this season. About 20 days back, PWD had dismantled the top layer of the road from Chirag Delhi to Nehru Place and I had subsequently lodged a complaint. Though they have started work, they are doing it in parts, which does not help the amount of dust affecting the Outer Ring Road. Due to heavy traffic, visibility has become zero. If the government knows this is the season when pollution peaks, why do they not plan repair works accordingly?” said Chetan Sharma, chairman of federation of Greater Kailash II Complex RWAs.
Dust a major contributor to pollution: Experts
Dust is one of the biggest sources of pollution in Delhi, and can contribute to as much as 25% of the Capital’s bad air, according to a 2018 source apportionment study by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).
Dust-related pollution shows up as elevated PM10 levels. The study also found that potholes, unpaved roads and broken footpaths, all of which cause road dust, were the largest source of such particles in the air.
“The primary pollutant in dust is PM10, which is a heavier particulate matter and hence cannot travel far but severely affects lungs, causing various respiratory diseases and allergic reactions,” said Mukesh Khare, an air pollution expert at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi.
“During this season, the transportation of construction materials should be stopped, regular sprinkling of water at construction sites should be done and various other precautionary measures should be taken. Another dangerous type of emission, called tyre emission is seen when vehicles run on bitumen, used in roads. Bitumen has a chemical and volatile organic carbon, which gets released in aerosol form and enters the lungs. This contains PM 2.5 and even smaller particulate matters, which can reach the air sacs in people’s lungs and cause heavy damage,” he said.
Civic agencies said that they are doing their best to ensure dust is contained.
“We are facing a tough situation. While there is dust during repair work, broken roads also add to road dust. So, we are also trying that most of re-carpeting and pothole repair work completes before the weather worsens. It is difficult for us also to work when restrictions are in place,” said a PWD official, declining to be named.
He added that PWD gets only around four hours at night to complete resurfacing and milling work on most road stretches.
“Since work is going on, the crushed material to be filled is kept along the road and cannot be moved. We have deployed mist guns but these have a very brief impact. We are also getting mechanical sweeping done every morning but that is also not effective. Once work is complete, we will get the entire area physically swept, but that will take about 10 more days,” the official said.