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The exponential growth of vehicles over the last decade has forced Bangladesh’s authorities to set new transport emission standards to curb increasing air pollution, in a country of more than two million vehicles and little effective monitoring.
On 2 May, environment minister Anwar Hossain informed parliament of the revision to the 2005 vehicular emission standard, but did not disclose details of them to the cabinet. Instead, he said that the standards were in the “process of approval”, without setting any time frame.
In 2005, for the first time, the government set detailed and comprehensive emission standards to improve air quality in Bangladesh. The standards allowed a petrol-run vehicle to emit 4.5% carbon monoxide and 1,200 parts per million (ppm) of hydrocarbon.
New emission standards for diesel-run vehicles are recommended at 60 Hartridge Smoke Units (HSU) for turbocharged vehicles, and 50 HSU for those that are not turbo charged, instead of 65 HSU set in the 2005 standard.
The proposed emissions for vehicles running on CNG remain unchanged at 3%. Hartridge Smoke Units are used to measure the opacity of exhaust gases, especially from diesel engines.
The number of vehicles in Bangladesh has grown by almost 135% since 2003, according to the DoE’s 2012 study. There are more than two million vehicles, and one million petrol-run motorcycles in use, says Shitangshu Shekhar Biswas, director of the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA).
In 2012, vehicles were the second largest air polluter after brick kilns, but the study predicted that vehicles would soon claim the top spot. In addition, some 80% of petrol-run motorcycles failed the inspection test carried out during the study.
The government could enforce new standards for petrol-run vehicles “but the main problem lies with diesel-run vehicles”, says Professor Mohammed Ehsan, a teacher of mechanical engineering at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
A second problem is the adulteration of diesel and petrol.
New laws must be strictly implemented to be useful, which is currently not the case, added Ehsan.
Up to 12% of Bangladesh’s urban population had asthma in 2002, according to a study by Orion Pharmaceuticals Limited from the same year. Air pollution was given as one of the main causes, and was also attributed to other pulmonary conditions, which have a huge toll on the health of the urban population.
Amid clamour from the environmental groups, civil society leaders and the media, the government phased out more than 40,000 polluting two-stroke baby taxis and introduced a CNG-fuelled three-wheeler.
While the government set the first vehicular emission standards in 2005, the proper facilities to enforce them were not available. “Every year, we issue fitness certificates to all vehicles from 76 offices dotted across the country, but unfortunately, we have no equipment to examine vehicular emission in 75 [of the 76] offices,” Biswas told thethirdpole.net, adding that the only BRTA office equipped with emission test facilities is in Dhaka’s Mirpur district.
(This article was first published on The Third Pole.)
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