The West Bengal pollution control board is contemplating using sensors to automatically detect the emission levels of various pollutants in industries and penalise the polluting ones.

Board chairman Sudip Banerjee told a CII-sponsored interactive session at the Bengal chamber of commerce and industries on Wednesday that PCB was considering fitting special kind of sensors in industrial units connected online to a monitoring system at the PCB office which would be alerted on emission levels if it crossed the stipulated levels. "These sensors can be attached to industry outlets to catch emission signals and notify the PCB electronically whenever emission levels are violated," he said. Mr Banerjee rued that no big industry except ITC had adopted an environment policy for energy conservation in West Bengal while the number of such units in Maharashtra was 118, those in Andhra Pradesh 110 and Karnataka 58. Mr Banerjee said 200 units were currently under closure in West Bengal due to violation of pollution control norms while 280 coal-fired industries had converted to cleaner technologies in the last three years.