Kolkata: The West Bengal Pollution Control Board (WBPCB) has partnered with Columbia University and a leading Bengaluru-based Indian think tank to examine whether urban industrial pollutants and rural pollutants in the state are equally toxic.
A WBPCB official said: “Not all pollutants are toxic in nature. We have observed that when Kolkata’s Air Quality Index (AQI) is around 200, it rises to 250 in Durgapur, an urban industrial area, while in Jalangi in Murshidabad — a rural monitoring station — the AQI is almost the same. In this backdrop, we have initiated research with CSTEP and Columbia University to determine whether urban industrial and rural pollutants are equally toxic”.
Elaborating on the initiative, Kalyan Rudra, chairman of the WBPCB, said that if toxicity levels differ between urban industrial and rural areas, the public health impact would also vary. “We have open-access data and collaborate with college and university teachers by making all our data available to them, so they can offer suggestions and guide us on additional measures needed to curb pollution,” Rudra said.
Rudra also pointed out that over the last 300 years, rising carbon dioxide emissions and increasing temperatures have altered ecological patterns, leading to crop losses, more frequent cyclones, and alarming ecosystem and biodiversity loss.
The state PCB currently operates 400 monitoring networks that generate pollution data at 15-minute intervals. Columbia University, led by Faye McNeill, Principal Investigator of the university’s Clean Air Initiative, calibrates the data and assists the Board in analysis and policy advice.
According to Rudra, when WBPCB began implementing pollution control measures under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) in 2019, the annual average PM10 concentration in Kolkata stood at 147. This declined to 94 in 2025. “However, there is no room for complacency, and sustained efforts are essential,” a WBPCB scientist said.