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

Abstract

Background and Objective: Air pollution is the most common cause of global warming, it has become a
major contributor in these past few years due to lack of awareness and control of pollution among people.1
Most of the people in India are unaware of what Air Quality Index is either. In urban areas excess use of fuels
and wastage of resources has caused massive increase in air pollution which lead to decrease in average life
span of human beings.2
Our objective was to assess the level of awareness and knowledge among the people regarding air pollution
and 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 the
people regarding air pollution and its prevention in selected urban areas of Pune city
Methods: A non-experimental descriptive design with quantitative approach, was adopted to assess the
knowledge on air pollution and its prevention and Air Quality index among people residing in urban areas
of Pune city. It includes 250 samples from selected areas .Non probability convenience sampling technique
was adopted in this study.
Result: Based on the objectives of the study which is to assess the knowledge of the people and the
association 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, its
prevention and air quality index; 76% of the people have an average knowledge regarding air pollution, its
prevention 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 demographic
variable of education alone has an association with 0.001 as the closest value to the average. The other
demographic variables of gender, age and employment do not have an association with the t value, as they
are more than the average with findings of 0.119, 0.643 and 0.481 respectively.