Delhi govt schools choke, private ones turn to air filters

IN THE NURSERY section of an elite South Delhi school this week, the head of Junior School conferred urgently with a class teacher whose students had left the room for a few minutes at the change of periods.

- SOPHIYA MATHEW & DRISHTI JAIN

“What are the PM2.5 levels?” she asked. “How can the CO2 levels be so high?” she demanded to know, her eyes on an air quality monitor. “Did the children just leave the room?”

The carbon dioxide level had just crossed the safe limit of 1,000 parts per million (ppm); the PM2.5 reading was around 200 micrograms/cubic metre. The class teacher told her the reason: yes, the 30-odd children had left just a few minutes ago, and yes, the classroom door had been left slightly ajar.

At the school, a close and constant watch is kept on fluctuations in air quality and pollutant concentrations, the Junior School head said.

All the classrooms are in a “YOGa Clean Air Bubble”, an air-purifying technology that claims to combine “traditional ventilation with modern filtration science” to create a “closed-loop bubble” in any indoor space.