Speakers at a seminar entitled ‘Environmental Pollution: A Dhaka Perspective’, referring to a recent Country Environment Analysis by World Bank, stressed the need to introduce CNG-run vehicles across the country, not just in the capital Dhaka. At the seminar hosted by the French-Bangladesh Association of Scholars and Trainees, environmental scientists said air pollution in Bangladesh is linked to more than 10 percent of unnatural deaths in Bangladesh, reported bdnews24.
An estimated 15,000 premature deaths a year are attributed to poor air quality in Dhaka, according to an Air Quality Management Project (AQMP), funded by the government and the World Bank.
World Bank environmental scientist M Khaliquzzaman also reportedly observed that the city’s air would be more tolerable now if diesel-run vehicles, such as the old auto rickshaws, as well as the thousands of buses and trucks that still use the highly polluting fuel, were converted into CNG-run ones much earlier. He pointed out that a diesel-run engine causes ten times more air pollution than a CNG-run one.
Eighty per cent of Dhaka’s air pollution is caused by vehicles and around 20 percent from brick kilns in and around the city, he said.
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology assistant professor Zia Wadud said 5,200 deaths have been prevented in the city since 2007 through the conversion of diesel-run vehicles into CNG-run ones. An estimated 80,000 diesel-run auto rickshaws were taken off the streets of Dhaka in 2007 and replaced with vehicles that run on Compressed Natural Gas. It cut air pollution by nine per cent, said Wadud.
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