Disclosing it to the newsmen at a media workshop here yesterday, Director General of the Department of Environment (DOE) Dr Omar Faruque Khan said DOE was now planning release of AQI thrice a week in cooperation with Bangladesh Meteorological Department.

"AQI will give complex information about the air pollution level and quality of air in a simple way that people can easily understand," he said expressing his firm optimism that the introduction of AQI would greatly help improve air quality management in the capital city of Bangladesh.

He said the air quality level of Dhaka city has already improved by 27 per cent to 40 per cent over the last six months due to several important measures undertaken by the present government.

The workshop was jointly organised by DOE and Forum of Environmental Journalists of Bangladesh (FEJB) at the DOE conference room. Journalists representing print and electronic media took part in the workshop.

"The purpose of AQI is to inform the people how clean or polluted air they are breathing in comparison to health based objectives. It is to advise the people about the general health effects associated with different pollution level," Dr Faruque said while spelling out the rationale of AQI.

He said, air quality index is now routinely released in many countries. The AQI scale runs from 0 to 500. If the AQI value for a particular area on a particular day is higher, it means air pollution level is higher and higher the health concern.

"We are dividing the AQI scale into four categories -- green, orange, red and purple and each category has a description of the level of health concern like good, unhealthy, very unhealthy and extremely unhealthy," said DOE Director Reazuddin. Chairman of FEJB Quamrul Islam Chowdhury suggested introduction of the air quality index in a very simple, easy and reader-friendly way so that newspapers, radio and television channels can use it easily to help disseminate public information for improving the country's air quality management.