The “smog tower”, the first smog-eating tower in all of India, was inaugurated today in Delhi. The twenty-meter-high structure was installed in Connaught Place, the elegant shopping area in the center of the capital. The giant air purifier will be up and running in a few weeks, at the end of the monsoon season, and should make the air within a square kilometer more breathable. After this first experimental tower, the government of Arvind Kejriwal, which cut the ribbon today, is expected to install another ten in the most congested areas of the capital: according to the Hindustan Times newspaper, the total cost of the project will be 2.7 million. dollars.
Gopal Rai, Delhi’s Environment Minister, said that the decision on the completion of the project will be taken after the surveys conducted on the results obtained by this first tower. Air quality in Delhi has been getting worse and worse in recent times: pollution reaches unacceptable peaks in the winter months, rising exponentially from mid-October to the end of February. According to the most recent study by IQAir, a Swiss global pollution control center, 35 of the 50 most polluted cities in the world are in India.