Air Quality Improves in Dhaka as Major Sources of Air Pollution are being Closed
The amount of air pollution in Dhaka, Bangladesh is reducing gradually from the past a month. Concerns say that due to the lockdown situation the main sources of air pollution are being shut down since Corona lockdown. And this is one of the major reasons for the improvement in the air quality of Dhaka.
The air pollution in Dhaka has been steadily decreasing for a month. According to the air quality index, Dhaka is now out of 10 most Air pollutant cities in the world.
From October 2019 Dhaka was lying in the list of top 5 cities most air pollutant cities along with Delhi, the capital city of India, and Karachi of Pakistan. Delhi and Karachi are still in the top 10 polluted air cities. But Dhaka has come down to 58th position. This has been observed in the observations of Air Visual, a global air monitoring organization.
According to Air Visual’s Weather Index on 27th June the cities around Dhaka include Warsaw in Poland (57th) and Denver (59th) in the United States. The top 5 cities in terms of air pollution are Karachi of Pakistan, Tehran of Iran, Jakarta of Indonesia, Dubai of the United Arab Emirates, and Delhi of India.
Officials and researchers in the Air Quality Management (AQM) division of the Department of Environment say the main sources of air pollution in Dhaka are now closed.
Construction of large buildings and infrastructure including Metrorail, Elevated Expressway, a major source of dust, has been being stopped. The Traffics movement is also low. The brick kilns are closed due to the onset of monsoon. This has reduced air pollution a lot considerably.
In this regard, Ziaul Haque, Director (AQM)) of Department of Environment, said, “The sources of air pollution in Dhaka are being closed since corona lockdown imposed. On the other hand, polluted airflow from the international borderline is also stopped due to monsoon.
Smoke from factories and coal-burnt power plants in China and India has stopped. As a result, pollution has decreased.”
And meteorologists think that from December to March, there is an atmospheric wind pressure over Bangladesh. This reduces the wind speed. So the contaminants cannot be removed. That pressure zone moved away from Bangladesh last May. And so the airflow has increased.
Due to this, contaminated substances cannot remain stable. That is why pollution has decreased. Apart from this, the amount of rain in this monsoon is more than in other years. As a result, subtle particles that pollute the air cannot be floated in the air. All these are combined to reduce air pollution in Dhaka.
According to the observation of the Atmospheric Research Center of Stamford University, the air quality in Dhaka has been improving since the beginning of May. By June, air quality has reached a ‘satisfactory’ level.
Kamruzzaman Majumder, director of the Air Quality Observation center, said, “Looking at the improvement of air quality in Dhaka, it seems that big infrastructures like brick kilns and Construction works od Dhaka Metrorail have kept the air quality in Dhaka in a very bad condition for so long.
Hopefully, in the future, the government will take initiatives on how to make these two sources eco-friendly and control pollution.”
Source: Prothom Alo
