GAW Report No. 205 - IGAC Project

CHAPTER 3 - ASIA• Strict restrictions on garbage burning during the winter months, especially the open burningfor heating purposes in the residential areas.• One-way transport along the major corridors for better flow of the traffic. Some corridors bededicated for the movement of the athletes, but similar provisions should be made forpassenger travel.• Aggressive procurement of buses and incentives to promote the use of bus and metro railsystems.• Promote telecommuting where possible, especially along the satellite cities like NOIDA andGurgaon, which experiences the largest rush hour traffic during the week days• Promote wet sweeping of the all the major roads, at least once every two days to reduce theamount of dust loading and thus reduce the resuspension due to increasing vehicularmovement.In the long run Delhi should implement some of the following air pollution managementstrategies:• The air quality monitoring network needs serious improvement in all respects – the numberof operational monitors, placement of the monitors across the city, dissemination of themonitoring data to the public and the media, access to the archives of monitoring data, andprovisions for further analysis.• In general, there is greater understanding of the pollution sources in the city now than everbefore. There is also a greater awareness among the public on the harmful impacts ofgrowing air pollution. Systematic programmes should be introduced in all sectors, startingwith tackling low lying sources, such as road dust and residential open waste burning toreduce the daily pollution levels.• For power plants, coal was slowly being replaced with natural gas, at least in the smallerpower plants, in order to reduce pollution during the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Thisintervention should be part of the long-term strategy.• In the transport sector, the public transport (via buses) and the NMT should be promotedequally, along with better traffic management for the passenger cars.3.5 DHAKA, BANGLADESHIntroduction and specific features of Dhaka, BangladeshBangladesh is situated in the eastern part of South Asia. The country is surrounded by India tothe west, the north, and the northeast, Myanmar to the southeast, and the Bay of Bengal on thesouth (Figure 22). Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated regions of the world.Meteorologically, the year can be divided into four seasons [Salam et al., 2003; Azad and Kitada,1996] pre-monsoon (March - May), monsoon (June - September), post monsoon (October -November), and winter (December - February). The average temperatures vary between 7 o C and25 o C in winter and high values between 25 o C and 38 o C in summer. Dhaka (23º76´N, 90º38´ E, and8 m above sea level) is the capital of Bangladesh (Figure 22). Dhaka is a rapidly growing megacitywith a population of approximately 13 million. Dhaka is the center for commercial, political, andcultural activities in Bangladesh. With the modernization of its transport, communication, publicworks sectors as well as industries, the capital city Dhaka is facing severe air pollution challenges.Emission sources of air pollutantsThere are many emission sources for air pollutants in Dhaka, e.g. large number of motorvehicles, construction activities (road and building), industry, brick fields, etc. Natural gas burningfor cooking and long-range transport also contributed to the air pollution in Dhaka. Begum et al.[2004] sampled fine and coarse fractions of ambient particulate matter (PM) in Dhaka between June2001 and June 2002. Six and seven different factors of elemental compositions for coarse and finePM fractions were identified with positive matrix factorization (PMF) technique. The sources are soildust, road dust, cement, sea salt, motor vehicles, and biomass burning. A large fraction, more than50%, of the PM 2.5–10 mass came from soil dust and road dust. Motor vehicles, including two strokes,contributed about 48% of the PM 2.5 mass in Dhaka.86