Sara Ali Manager   •   about 2 years ago

Ambient air pollution and Smog control is no more an option but an unavoidable reality for Pakistan

Air quality has great impact on human health. According to WHO the total number of deaths attributed to ambient air pollution and its consequential diseases including ALRI (acute lower respiratory infections) , COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) , Lung cancer, IHD (Ischemic heart disease) and Stroke in Pakistan in the year 2012 were sixty thousand [1]. The number is increased to 105 thousand in 2020. [2] The high health cost of air pollution related diseases is 1 percent of total GDP whereas the total cost of environmental degradation is 6 percent of GDP. Around 30 million of urban population is effected by smog. [3] In a study conducted in 2021 the avoidable mortality of only IHD and lung cancer was more than 2 million with a total cost related to this mortality was US$ 1000 million in Pakistan.[4] Pakistan is ranked in top 10 countries having highest concentration of PM 2.5 with annual mean of 44.21μg/m3 far higher than the recommended value of 10 µg/m3 by WHO. [5, 6] The solution is simply in remote sensing. A surveillance system where only spatial pictures can detect which industry or brick kiln is not following policies and which areas need to be improved. Through this industries which are not obeying policy guidelines can be recognized in very low cost and mitigation techniques specifically for the industry can be recognized.