Characterizing the Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Open Burning of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in Indian Cities

Open-burning of municipal solid waste (MSW) is a major source of PM emissions in developing world cities, but few studies have characterized this phenomenon at the city and intra-city (neighborhood) scale relevant to human health impacts. This paper develops a consistent field method for measuring the spatial frequency of the incidence of MSW-burning and presents results in three neighborhoods of varying socioeconomic status (SES) in Delhi, India, observed in winter and summer over 2 years. Daily MSW-burning incidents ranged from 24-130/km2-day during winter and 5-87/km2-day during summer, with the highest intensity in low SES neighborhoods. Distinct seasonal and diurnal patterns are observed. The daily mass of MSW-burned was also estimated at 90-1170 kg/km2-day and 13-1100 kg/km2-day in highest to low SES neighborhoods, in winter and summer, respectively. The scaled-up estimate of total MSW-burned for Delhi city ranged from 190-246 tons/day, about 2%-3% of total generated MSW; morning-burning contributed >65% of the total. MSW composition varied systematically across neighborhoods and season. Agra had much higher MSW-burning (39-202 incidents/km2-day; 672-3485kg/km2-day) in the summer. The field method thus captures differences in MSW-burning across cities, neighborhoods, diurnally and seasonally, important for more fine grained air pollution modeling, and for tracking/monitoring policy effectiveness on-ground.