LAHORE: Air quality in Lahore is at a moderate level and wind conditions on Monday are expected to help disperse pollutants further, the Punjab Environment Protection Department said, crediting the provincial government’s anti-smog measures with producing early positive results.
Wind speed in the provincial capital is expected to range between 5 and 12 miles per hour through the day, with a further increase in speed anticipated after midday. Higher wind speeds assist the horizontal dispersal of particulate matter and typically bring down ground-level concentrations of PM2.5 in the afternoon hours.
Director General Environment Protection Abdullah Nayyar Sheikh said anti-smog measures were continuing on the directions of Chief Minister Punjab Maryam Nawaz Sharif, and that air quality is being monitored continuously in Lahore and across Punjab.
He said a zero-tolerance policy has been adopted against environmental pollution and that effective action is being taken against violators of environmental laws.
Field action to control pollution is also under way, he said, with the relevant departments keeping the air quality situation under constant observation. He appealed to citizens to avoid activities that add to environmental pollution.
Lahore is entering the period of the year that determines the severity of its smog season. From late September onward, night-time temperature inversions begin to trap pollutants in a shallow layer close to the ground, while wind speeds fall. The same emission load that disperses easily in September can produce hazardous readings by late October under a stable inversion.
That is why the department’s current readings — recorded while the city still has meaningful ventilation and residual post-monsoon moisture — are a baseline rather than an outcome. Lahore’s air quality recorded an AQI of 147 during rainfall that arrived a day early on 13 September, a reading in the unhealthy-for-sensitive-groups band.
Punjab’s current anti-smog framework combines source-level enforcement with remote monitoring. The province has deployed thermal drones to track smog sources, allowing inspection teams to identify night-time crop-residue burning and illegal industrial emissions that are difficult to detect from the ground.
Alongside that, the department’s field operations target the established contributors to the province’s particulate load: brick kilns not converted to zig-zag technology, industrial units operating without emission controls, smoke-emitting vehicles, and the burning of crop residue and solid waste.
A separate PM2.5 source apportionment study carried out jointly by the Environment Protection and Climate Change Department and SUPARCO has quantified one component of the problem directly. It found that fossil fuel combustion contributes more than twice as much black carbon to Lahore’s air as biomass burning — a finding with direct implications for which levers matter most in the months ahead. (See accompanying report.)
Air quality readings in Lahore vary substantially by location and by hour. Residents with respiratory or cardiac conditions are advised to check current AQI readings before outdoor exertion rather than relying on a single daily figure, and to limit strenuous outdoor activity during early morning hours when concentrations are typically highest.
The Lahore Times publishes daily weather and air quality updates for Lahore in its Lahore section.
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