ISLAMABAD: With more vehicles and industrial units, air pollution is on the rise in the federal capital.

“From colourless, odourless carbon dioxide to oxides of nitrogen to hazardous air pollutant, formdehyde, mostly emitted from vehicles, is what the residents breathe every day,” said a reply prepared by the climate change ministry to a question raised in the National Assembly.

The response was based on studies conducted by the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) and Japan International Cooperation Agency five years ago.

“The ministry has no updated figures since 2011 after its environment monitoring system (EMS) became non-functional. It also has no mechanism to calculate the increase in suspended particulate matter and emissions from vehicles and factories in the air over Islamabad,” said an environment expert in the ministry.

The Rs1.2 billion EMS purchased with assistance from the Japanese government has been non-functional since 2011.

“It was one of the most ambitious projects of Pak-EPA. For the last five years, the machine has only gathered dust and its parts have deteriorated,” the official said.

According to a source, rising numbers of vehicles were a major cause of emissions and smoke. “In Islamabad, the number of registered vehicles in 1998 was just 60,000.

According the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the number of the registered vehicles increased to 15.2 million in 2013-14,” the expert said.

Last week, in response to a question raised in the National Assembly, the ministry said the suspended particulate matter in the air in all major cities, including Lahore, Karachi and Faisalabad, was six to seven times higher than the acceptable level set by the World Health Organisation. It said 40pc pollution was from the increasing vehicle traffic and the rest from industries.

The ministry added that the estimated cost of environmental and natural resource damages was about Rs365 billion a year. Urban air pollution was likely to cause around 22,000 premature deaths among adults and 77 deaths among children, putting the estimated costs of health at about Rs62 billion to Rs65 billion.

However, despite the release of Rs1.8 million to fix the EMS, Pak-EPA has failed to revive the air quality monitoring machine installed on its premises in Sector H-8.

When contacted, the secretary of the ministry of climate change, Syed Abu Ahmed Akif, said: “Funds have been released to make the machine operational. The equipment should be up and running in about ten or 12 days.”

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2016