Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research
Dr. Dilip Boralkar is senior environmental scientist possessing about 50 years of experience in the field of pollution control, assessment, regulation and environment protection at national and international levels. He held important positions at CPCB and MPCB, Mumbai. Most of us know Dr. Boralkar for his eventful stint as Member Secretary of MPCB where he promoted public-private partnership in creating common environmental infrastructure and set an example of proactive approach for pollution control and environment protection in the State of Maharashtra.
Dr. Boralkar has been Member of the Indian Delegation to the United Nation’s Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes and made contributions as Expert Member of several high-level technical committees appointed by the State Government(s), Central Government, High Court and the Supreme Court as well.
Dr. Boralkar has done pioneering and original research work on development of air quality index for Mumbai based on comparison of responses of green plants and AAQ data using physico-chemical methods. Commonwealth Youth Research Scholarship was awarded for presentation of this work at International Society of Tropical Ecology at Kuala Lumpur as early as in the year 1978.
Air pollution ranks among the leading risk factors contributing to the disease burden in India with roughly equal contributions from ambient air pollution (AAP) and household air pollution (HAP). The dual burden from AAP and HAP exposures that straddles across rural and urban populations poses an enormous challenge for air quality management.
Over the last three decades, the team of researchers from SRIHER have systematically contributed to strengthening the pool of evidence on health effects of air pollution through multiple strategic exposure assessment and epidemiological studies across multiple states. These studies have collectively provided seminal contributions for (i) state and national level exposure models (ii) exposure-response relationships for acute and chronic health effects (iii) biomonitoring protocols for health and exposure surveillance and (iv) assessment of efficacy and cost-effectiveness of interventions.
The talk will summarize the key research contributions of the SRIHER team and on-going initiatives that provide unique opportunities to prioritize air quality actions and create “equitable seamless breathing spaces” in India.
© 2025 10th INDIAN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT
