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Air in city, residential areas unhealthy
KATHMANDU, JAN 02 - Adding much worries to city-dwellers hit by the growing chill, air quality in the capital has shown a deteriorating trend with the level of fine dust particles going higher and higher. Thanks to biting cold and brick kilns.
"The air in the core city and residential areas have now gone to an unhealthy level due to growing cold and brick kilns in the valley," Chiranjivi Gautam, an environmentalist in-charge of ambient air quality monitoring programme at the Ministry of Population and Environment (MoPE), said.
The air of the places, according to MoPE pollution results , now contains concentration of fine dust particles, known as PM10, far above national safe limit for the pollutant. The core city areas like Putalisadak have air with PM10, three times higher than the pollutant’s safe limit 120 microgram per cubic meter. The pollutant is two times higher than the national safe limit in the residential area like Thamel.However, the fringe areas of the valley like Matsyagaon, Kirtipur have the air good enough to breathe, the pollutant in the air of the places being at the safe limit. Anything exceeding the safe limit is considered to be harmful to human health. The World Health Organisation has set no safe limit for the pollutant.
The air in the valley is deteriorating gradually ever since the advent of the winter season. Air pollution resulting from fine dust particles in the Kathmandu valley soars up to an unhealthy level, even to hazardous level in the winter season. Due to the inversion of temperature resulting from coldness the air of the valley remains confined, leading to the concentration of PM10, according to environmentalists.
Besides, brick kilns in the valley come into operation during the dry season, further worsening the air of the valley. They are more than 30 percent responsible for the deterioration of the air in the valley.
The air quality monitoring station at Putalisadak registered PM10, as high as 323 microgram per cubic meter on December 25, which is nearly three times higher than the safe limit of the pollutant. The December 25 registration is the highest since the start of this winter. The concentration of the pollutant in the summer season at the place used to be around 200 microgram per cubic meter.
Aside from Putalisadak, the station at Patan, which shows air quality at the roadside, has registered the level of PM110 as heading towards a very unhealthy level from the present unhealthy status at 231 microgram per cubic meter.
Similarly, air quality monitoring stations at Thamel and Bhaktapur are showing air with thickening concentration of fine dust particles. The Thamel station, which shows quality of air of the residential areas in the valley, registered 260 microgram per cubic meter on December 25. The registration is nearly two times higher than it was during monsoon.
As nearly 215 brick kilns, most of them illegally run, have begun operation, it is natural of Bhaktapur to have air with high concentration of fine dust particles to an unhealthy level. The station there recorded the level of PM10 at 160 microgram per cubic meter, which used to be much below the national safe limit in the summer season when the brick kilns remain closed.
PM10 is the major pollutant to the air of Kathmandu. As it remains suspended for a long time in air, it is easily inhaled into lungs. Studies have shown growing cases of heart diseases, asthma and other respiratory diseases in the valley. Exposure to the pollutant is considered to be more dangerous to children, the old and other physically-weak people.Posted on: 2004-01-03 04:34
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