Colombo, 22 February, (Asiantribune.com): The rapidly increasing vehicle population and fuel consumption particularly diesel, high proportion of old vehicles and poor vehicle maintenance; absence of clean fuel, and the high rate of urbanization are contributing to dangerous pollution levels in Sri Lanka.

The main culprit in the country's worsening air pollution, which is significantly higher than internationally accepted standards is due to our vehicle emissions which stands at an appalling 65%, on an overall basis, while thermal power and factory emissions accounts for 33% together, the balance is by open burning such as the burning of garbage.

Although so far approximately 2.4 million vehicles have been registered at the Department of Motor Traffic and only 1.5 million of these vehicles are active, and 60% of these vehicles run in Colombo, this was disclosed by the Air Resource Management Centre (AirMAC), which comes under the purview of the Central Environmental Authority.

Despite the severity of the situation, most people in the world including Sri Lanka have failed to understand the true implications of air pollution which according to the World Health Organization kills more than 3 million people every year.

Adverse reaction to one's health due to air pollution does not only limit to colds, asthma, sore throats, cough, vomiting and headaches, but also results in brain damage, lung diseases, heart diseases, eye irritations and even cancer. Air pollutants include carbon monoxide, ozone, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulates.

When the Air Resource Management Centre (AirMAC) embarked on a pilot project in 2001/2003 where it monitored several hundreds of vehicles to determine whether these vehicles were within the stipulated regulations, approximately 70% of some 700 vehicles taken in for this pilot project failed the necessary standards, as they posed severe implications to the environment.

"The Centre then realized that their standards were too strict as removing more than 50% of the vehicles from the road would result in many social and other issues, thus it decided to revise its initial standards and relax it to a certain extent. It was then decided to remove only the extremely worst vehicles amounting to 10% from the road," Programme Coordinator Ruwan Weerasuriya said.

While the balance vehicles which did not come under 'good condition' were to be issued with a warning to carry out strict and continuous maintenance of their vehicles or those will also be taken away from the roads.

If everything goes according to plan, probably within the next several months, the Government might enforce this law where the said regulation will be brought in, where according to the Gazette Extraordinary no:1295/11 date June 30, 2003, the Annual Revenue license will be issued only for the vehicles that confirm certain exhaust emission standards. Vehicles failing to comply with these standards will not be issued their revenue license.

"While only some motorists contribute to traffic fatalities, all motorists contribute to air pollution fatalities," Mr. Weerasuriya pointed out.

European Commission last year disclosed that air pollution reduces life expectancy by an average of almost nine months across the EU. Air pollution is responsible for 310,000 premature deaths in Europe each year with 32,000 deaths in UK alone, however the highest being in Germany amounting to about 65,088.

AirMAC has also launched a campaign urging vehicle owners and drivers to take better care of their vehicles. The centre calls upon all those responsible to clean the air filters regularly and or change it when necessary, adjust tappets of the engine, if the engine is worn out repair it, change the fuel filter in time, examine diesel injector nozzles regularly and replace it when needed, examine the diesel injector pump at the right time and repair it, load the vehicle to its stipulated capacity, change the spark plug when necessary and examine the ignition systems, tune engines, examine the activity of the catalytic converter and replace it needs.

The campaign points out that if the vehicle owners follow these instructions they get vast amount of benefits including increased fuel efficiency leading to lower fuel bills, increased life time of the engine, reduce cost of repairs of engines, save foreign exchange due to reduce imports of fuel and increase efficiency and economic development due to reduction of diesel use. The Centre also cites reduced cost to the government on health expenditure, as a lesser number of masses will suffer if vehicle emissions reduce significantly.

Despite the environmental ministry making repeated attempts in the year 2003 and 2004 to ban three wheelers and two wheelers which have two stroke engines, the attempts proved futile, as the then respective cabinet of ministers refused to go ahead with the ban.

According to a 2005 survey report by the transport ministry, respiratory diseases is the 2nd leading cause of hospitalization. Asthma has become a major respiratory disease due mainly to the explosive growth of three wheelers (mostly 2 stroke) and 2-wheelers (nearly 40% consist of 2-stroke engines) and the significant increase in diesel consumption. The 3-wheelers represent more than 50% of the overall million vehicles population and 85% of the operational road vehicles.

During the 90s, the per capita petrol fuel consumption increased by 23% while per capita diesel fuel consumption increased by 92%. Overall the small diesel fleet increased 300% due to the pricing policies of diesel vs. petrol. Even 63% of all the 4-wheelers were diesel in 2000 compared with 46% in 1985.

Source: http://www.asiantribune.com/show_news.php?id=17141