A Study to Assess the Knowledge Regarding Air Quality Index among People Residing in Selected Urban Areas of Pune City

Goyir Ori1 , Jumyir Rime2 , Suraj Jhadhav3 , Jasneet Kaur4 , Mangesh Jabade5

Indian Journal of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology
Vol. 14 No. 4 (2020): Indian Journal of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology

Background and Objective: Air pollution is the most common cause of global warming, it has become amajor contributor in these past few years due to lack of awareness and control of pollution among people.1Most of the people in India are unaware of what Air Quality Index is either. In urban areas excess use of fuelsand wastage of resources has caused massive increase in air pollution which lead to decrease in average lifespan of human beings.2Our objective was to assess the level of awareness and knowledge among the people regarding air pollutionand its prevention in selected urban areas of Pune.As well to find the level of knowledge on AQI and to find the association between knowledge among thepeople regarding air pollution and its prevention in selected urban areas of Pune cityMethods: A non-experimental descriptive design with quantitative approach, was adopted to assess theknowledge on air pollution and its prevention and Air Quality index among people residing in urban areasof Pune city. It includes 250 samples from selected areas .Non probability convenience sampling techniquewas adopted in this study.Result: Based on the objectives of the study which is to assess the knowledge of the people and theassociation between the demographic variables, the following result has been identified.The knowledge level was identified as; 20.8% of the people have a poor knowledge level on air pollution, itsprevention and air quality index; 76% of the people have an average knowledge regarding air pollution, itsprevention and air quality index and only 3.2% of the people have good knowledge regarding air pollution,its prevention and air quality index. By using the paired t test formula, the t value is 0.05. The demographicvariable of education alone has an association with 0.001 as the closest value to the average. The otherdemographic variables of gender, age and employment do not have an association with the t value, as theyare more than the average with findings of 0.119, 0.643 and 0.481 respectively.