Le Thanh Hai, Director of the Institute of Environment and Resources, said the average annual concentration of PM2.5 fine dust in Vietnamese cities is about 28 mg per cubic meter, or 3 times higher than the recommended average level of 10 mg per cubic meter.

With rapid urbanization and the increase of personal vehicles, the air pollution situation in big cities is becoming serious, and will worsen in the future if no policies and specific goals are set and no timely actions are made.

In HCM City, experts pointed out that there are three major sources of emissions causing air pollution, including vehicle emissions, industrial production and other activities such as construction, cooking and agriculture.

Of these, transport activities have been identified as the biggest source of pollutants in the city, which generate 46 percent of total dust and 99 percent of CO emissions.

While the air pollution is becoming more serious in large cities, especially HCM City, there is no radical solution to settle the problem to the root.

There are approximately 10 million vehicles, which include 7.6 million motorbikes, 700,000 cars and more than 2 million vehicles brought by people from other provinces to the city.

A high number of personal vehicles is believed not to strictly observe periodic maintenance, which leads to an increase in the volume of emissions to the environment.

Scientists pointed out that the central areas are not capable of receiving more CO and NOx.

While the air pollution is becoming more serious in large cities, especially HCM City, there is no radical solution to settle the problem to the root.

Ho Quoc Bang, Director of Research Center for Air Pollution and Climate Change, an arm of the HCM City National University, said that the three issues of the National Plan on Air Quality Control by 2020 with the vision until 2025 still cannot be implemented effectively. This is because air quality control has not been deployed in localities.

Meanwhile, the standards set by Vietnam are less strict than other countries in the world. The permitted levels of PM 10 and PM 2.5 dust in Vietnam, for example, are double than WHO standards.

The emission zoning standards needto be defined in a more detailed, clearer and stricter manner, in which it is necessary to specify discharge load instead of discharge concentration.

Each locality needs to re-estimate the volume of emissions that the air environment can receive based on socio-economic development plans and the meteorological conditions of the region. This will serve as the basis for state management agencies to license discharges, and collect emission fees from the owners of emission sources.

Mai Chi

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