GSP Air Pollution Survey Result – Webinar, May 2020
| Air pollution is an issue which affects everyone. To bring awareness in the school community, it is also included as an integral part of the GSP Audit along with other sections that schools assess their performance on—Energy, Food, Land, Water, and Waste. The section on Air helps schools examine the quality of air students breathe within and around the campus. It also encourages them to gauge and improve commuting practices and their impact on the environment. The audit works towards enabling schools to devise a way of operating that ensures minimum pollution.
The GSP team organized a webinar for teachers to announce the results of the Air Pollution Survey on Health for Schools, conducted as a part of the first air pollution seminar: Air Pollution and Health Impact on Children (August, 2019) at AAETI campus, Alwar Rajasthan and Delhi. The webinar was planned to bring the teachers who participated in the offline seminar in AAETI on an online platform and share the results of the air pollution survey submitted by the students to the GSP team after completion of the workshop. 43 teachers participated in the webinar from Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal. The webinar took place on Thursday, May 28, 2020, from 11 AM to 12 PM to share the state-wise results with all the 50 schools who had participated in the seminar. Total 43 teachers participated in the webinar from 41 schools. The major findings discussed in the webinar included reference to the non-attainment cities and the overall scenario on the participating schools’ cities.39 cities from the eight participating states are non-attainment cities. As we all know, one of the major sources of air pollution is the vehicle running on the road, we observed the same in the responses and 64 per cent face air pollution due to traffic and smoky vehicles in the area. Air pollution sources were observed more in the residential areas than in the schools’ vicinity. The respondents reported road dust, vehicle exhaust, large and small industries and garbage burning as the major sources of air pollution. Interestingly, the majority think that there is no impact of outside air pollution on the indoor air quality. One of the positive things came out from the survey was 75 per cent take sustainable or non-polluting mode of transport. As we all know, the lockdown enforced due to the COVID-19 pandemic led to short term improvement in air quality in India. Now, it’s our responsibility to maintain the air quality standards, even after the normalcy is restored. Through the webinar, the participants were encouraged to share the survey findings and suggestions with their respective schools to maintain the good air quality in and around their respective schools. Some of the suggestions such as the following were discussed:
All the material related to the webinar—presentation, final survey assessment report, etc. are available for download here. For any further queries and suggestions, schools can reach out to us at [email protected], or call on 011 40616000; Ext 321, 300, (Monday to Friday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM) Please note that as due to COVID-19, we may not be able to receive phone calls till we resume office. We request our readers to contact us via email. |
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