the crowds thronging Janpath, Delhi's premier shopping mall in Connaught Place, are blissfully unaware of the serious health risk due to the alarming level of cancer-causing benzene in the air. The new indicative data on benzene levels, available from an investigation done by a foreign scientist, is a rebuke to the Indian air quality regulators.

M P Keuken of tno Netherlands Institute for Applied Research, who conducted the study, said the air concentration of benzene in central Delhi exceeds the air quality standards of the European Union by as much as 10 times. The air samples were taken in October 1996. Since then, the situation may well have worsened.

Keuken made this revelation at a workshop on Integrated Approach To Vehicular Pollution control. The workshop was jointly organised by the World Bank and Government of Delhi.

In the west of Janpath, the concentration of benzene measured was as high as 139