The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) recently designated the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Physical Laboratory (CSIR-NPL) as a national agency that shall be responsible for carrying out certification for instruments and equipments for monitoring emissions and ambient air.

The ministry issued a notification on August 22 under Section 3 of the Environment Protection Act, giving CSIR-NPL the authority to certify instruments. The aim is to have a check on the quality of instruments and data. The development comes in the backdrop of the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), released in January 2019 by the environment ministry.

“This is a positive move and will bring uniformity in the instruments that are currently being used for regulatory grade monitoring through enhanced scrutiny on instrument design and performance, and that will address issues related to data quality,” said Rajendra Prasad, chief executive, Ecotech Instruments, which manufactures air-quality measuring instruments.

These days many low quality instruments are flooding the market and thereis no basis to choose the right product. In most cases, the design of the instruments deviate from the standard given by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Therefore, with the help of this notification, NPL will be able to test all instruments that are floating in the market and issue a certificate only if their specificationsmeet the quality standard. This will foster user confidence in the product, its design, its calibration and its data quality.

Read more: Sensor-based air quality monitoring instruments left out of new certification scheme