Washington: The United States, on Wednesday, announced expansion of one of its air-quality monitoring programme - AirNow to India.
The programme is meant to monitor air-quality in host cities and countries to help US personnel posted there take better care of themselves.
It was started years ago in Beijing and will be expanding to many other cities around the world starting with India.
The programme, as announced by the Secretary of state John Kerry, is an agreement between his department and the Environment Protection Agency with India as its first destination and Vietnam next.
A factsheet released by the department of the state said, “"Air pollution is a serious and growing health threat worldwide, yet in many areas, real-time air quality data is not available.”
It further speaks of doubts in strategy to be implemented with Delhi in India.
US believes that the Beijing experiment worked well not only for the Americans posted their but for the people of the host country too which eventually lead China down the path of pollution control.
"Our experts would be taking off in the next few weeks to get this programme started in India," said EPA administrator Gina McCarthy at the launch of the programme.
Apparently, hushed under the covers, the stated objective of helping US personnel is an assumption that the targeted host countries are incapable to monitor air quality – suspended particulate matter – on their own.
