Air pollution in five Indian megacities during the Christmas and New Year celebration amidst COVID-19 pandemic

Urban air quality and COVID-19 have been considered significant issues worldwide in the last few years. The current study highlighted the variation in air pollutants (i.e., PM2.5, PM10, NO2, and SO2) profile between Christmas and new year celebrations in 2019, 2020, and 2021. It can be seen that the concentration of selected air pollutants shows a substantially higher concentration in celebration periods in all reported years. The results indicate that air pollutants values are always higher than permissible limits. This observation indicates that people gather and reunite during Christmas and new year celebrations than the preceding years (2020 and 2021) amidst the pandemic. In the pandemic year, a higher margin enhanced the transportation and firework-induced air pollutant load in urban city Jodhpur, Rajasthan. In all states, a significant tendency was observed to retain the concentration profile of air pollutants in baseline concentration for almost more than one week after the celebration. This study addresses the pandemic situation, but it also dealt with the air pollutant parameter that brings down the sustainable quality of the environment due to the high usage of private vehicles, and crackers. In addition, a study on COVID-19 (cases and death rate) indicates a clear picture of the increasing trend after the event in probably all states. Thus, this approach suggested that stringent law enforcement is needed to ameliorate gatherings/reunions and pollution levels due to such events.