The program was planned to familiarize Nepalese air quality experts with modern portable equipments working on laser photometric principle for monitoring particulate matter in the air. Besides this, the program intended to offer hands on experience of handling the equipments. Mr. Dieter Schwela and Mr. Gary Haq, well known international air quality experts from SEI were the resource persons for the program. Altogether 19 participants representing various organizations those are involved in AQM issues in Nepal such as ENPHO, Clean Energy Nepal, ICIMOD, CANN, Alternative Energy Promotion Center, Tribbuvan University, and Kathmandu University took part in the program.

Mr. Bhusan Tuladhar, ED of ENPHO welcomed all the participants and gave a brief overview on the objective of the program. "Till date we are using gravimetric air quality monitoring equipments such as high volume and low volume sampler to measure particulate matters in air. The modern and portable digital equipments based on laser photometry principle are new to many of us." he said. According to Mr. Tuladhar, these types of equipments are very suitable to carry out campaign air quality monitoring in different parts of Nepal.

Then, Mr. Dieter Schwela and Mr. Gary Haq provided the detail technical and operational information on the equipments.

DUSTTRACKTM Aerosol Monitor 8520 produced by TCI,costing nearly 6500$, is a portable, battery –operated laser photometer with real time mass concentration readout and data logging capability. The monitor provides reliable exposure assessment by measuring particle concentrations corresponding to respirable size, PM 10, PM 2.5 or PM 1.0 size fractions.

The aerosol monitor detects potential problems with air borne contaminants such as dust, smoke, fumes and mists. We can perform quick spot checks or program the advanced logging modes for long term unattended sampling.

During the program, the participants recorded the real data using equipments. The equipments are provided with software which can directly display the results of the sampling in the form of pictures and tables by importing data from dust track into computer.

Mr. Dieter is here in Kathmandu under RAPIDC project of ICIMOD. Under RAPIDC project, ICIMOD is undertaking campaign air quality monitoring in 60 locations of Kathmandu valley with the help of passive samplers. These dust tracks will be operated by ICIMOD to compare the data provided by passive samplers. In the initial phase dust tracks will be placed in two locations for one week - Thamel and Patan where permanent monitoring stations are in operation.