Pollution: Delhi gets first smog tower. Here's all you need to know about it

Ahead of the air pollution season, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated India’s first-ever smog tower installed at Delhi's Connaught Place to help combat rising air pollution levels.

The over 20-metre-tall tower has been set up to improve air quality in a radius of around 1 km and is expected to "operate at full capacity" after the monsoon ends, Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai said.

The smog tower, built at a cost of ₹22 crores, will be able to purify 1,000 cubic metres of air every second.

Meanwhile, the Centre has also built a 25-metre-tall smog tower at Anand Vihar which might become operational by the end of August, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) said.

Delhi is one of the world's most polluted cities with extremely high amounts of PM2.5, PM10 and other noxious chemicals and smoke permeating the atmosphere.

The Supreme Court had in January last year directed the central government to construct a smog tower to reduce pollution at Anand Vihar, and the Delhi government to install another such structure at Connaught Place in three months.

In August, the apex court had reprimanded the Centre and the state government for missing the deadline for completing the construction of two smog towers.

A study carried out by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) showed that the annual average PM2.5 concentration in 2020 for Delhi was 93 Aug/m3, which is more than twice the permissible limit for PM2.5 in India.

Despite the low activity levels for close to eight months due to the pandemic induced lockdown in 2020, Delhi residents were exposed to National Ambient Air Quality Standard's (NAAQS) non-compliant air for more than half of the year, the study said.

The prototype for a smog tower was first built in 2017 by a Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde, in Beijing. It was later installed in China's Tianjin and Poland's Krakow.

In 2018, a 100-metre long smog tower was built in China's Xi'an. Currently, it is under testing by researchers at the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.