Factor Analysis of Air Pollutants over Hyderabad - A Case Study

Pollution levels in Metros of India are raising to alarm levels in last decades. This issue needs to be addressed immediately because it is hazardous to people's health. The present work is focused to highlight the major air pollutants in various areas of Hyderabad using publicly available data at Kaggle.com. By consolidating more air pollutants into fewer factors, this study's key objective is to reduce the complexity of air pollution. This helps to understand the interdependency of air pollutants. Ten air pollution-causing components of five different locations including residential and industrial areas in Hyderabad were identified and analyzed using Factor Analysis. There was an attempt made to find out the contribution of various air pollutant components to air pollution using standard Karl Pearson's coefficient of correlation and factor analysis using the Varimax method. The results of the analysis showed similar air pollutant components resulting in factors depending on the nature of the location. Residential cum industrial areas, ICRISAT and ZOO park had PM2.5, PM10, NOx, CO grouped into Factor 1 as major contribution to AQI, VOCs were the second major contributors followed by NH3, SO2, O3. However, in the residential area HCU ten air pollutants resulted into only two factors; first factor being CO, SO2, O3 and VOCs as contributors generated due to residential communities and PM2.5, PM10, NOx, NH3 as factor two. Bollaram has PM2.5, PM10, CO, O3 as factor one as major pollution is contributed due to traffic and industries and Pashamylaram has NOx, SO2 and VOCs as factor one due to the presence of pharmaceutical industries in the vicinity.