Clean Air Act still eludes country

Bangladesh is crawling to enact a law called "Clean Air Act" to control air pollution for last two decades.
It also failed to do anything to combat trans-boundary air pollution, although it was proven that polluted air is drifting into Bangladesh from elsewhere.

"Striving for Clean Air: Air Pollution and Public Health in South Asia", a study report published by the World Bank has said that due to prevailing northwest-to-southeast winds, an estimated 30 per cent of pollution in Bangladeshs largest cities originates in north India.

The report says that unfit road vehicles, brick kilns and cooking with biomass are all polluting the air in India and Nepal, unfortunately Bangladesh is the worst sufferer for it.

"To combat trans-boundary air pollution, four South Asian countries - Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan - agreed to reduce national annual average PM 2.5 levels to 35 micrograms per cubic meter by 2030, World Bank and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, facilitated the meeting in 2022 in Nepal, however, this agreement has yet to garner political endorsement," a senior official of the  Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change told the Daily observer on Saturday.

According to a report of "State of Global Air Quality Funding 2023" report by the NGO Clean Air Fund, Bangladesh was the third-top recipient of international funding for outdoor air quality improvements between 2017 and 2021. The report also says Bangladesh received USD 2.4 billion in international development funding for air quality improvement between 2015 and 2021.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has taken up a programme called "Clean Air and Sustainable Environment (CASE)" and has been running a project from 2012-2013 to identify the gross air polluting sectors--to design and demonstrate cleaner technologies in brick manufacturing sectors, and to study the emissions from other major sources like vehicles, industries to curb the emissions but it is only for  8 cities-- Dhaka, Chittagong, Narayanganj, Gazipur, Khulna, Rajshahi, Barisal and Sylhet-- but we have no information about the pollution of the major part of the country.

Air pollution is one of the major environmental threats in all these cities. Dhaka has entered its name on the list of cities worldwide with the worst air quality. For last two years Dhaka leveled its position on the list of cities worldwide with the worst air quality with an AQI score of 101 and 297.

An AQI between 101 and 150 is considered "unhealthy", AQI between 201 and 300 is said to be "very unhealthy", while a reading of 301+ is considered "hazardous", posing serious health risks to residents.

"We are working on Clean Air Act trying to incorporate it into 1995s Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act. This led to the publication of Air Pollution Control Rules in 2022. These rules form the basis for the National Air Quality Management Plan by 2024," the official said.

In Bangladesh, the AQI is based on five criteria pollutants - Particulate Matter (PM10 and PM2.5), NO2, CO, SO2, and Ozone.

Air pollution consistently ranks among the top risk factors for death and disability worldwide, so we need to enact a right law to combat the local and trans-boundary air pollution issue as a recent study says. Bangladesh has the most polluted air in the world. The Air Quality Life Index 2023 (compiled by the University of Chicagos Energy Policy Institute with 2021 data) found that the air in Bangladesh had an average PM 2.5 level of 74 micrograms per cubic metre. By contrast, levels of 58.7, 30.2 and 7.8 were recorded for India, China, and the US respectively.

The latest World Health Organization global Air Quality Guidelines, published in 2021, are designed as a set of air quality targets for governments to meet. When the national average pollution of Bangladesh in 2021 is measured against these targets, it is estimated that each resident of the country is losing 6.8 years of life, the official added. ends/shahnaj.