HCMC: The air is contaminated with lead

Nguyen Thuy

In Ho Chi Minh City, the amount of lead in the air has doubled, from 0.5μg / m3 to over 1μg / m3. The abnormal increase in lead as mentioned above is due to the fact that there has been a lot of leaded gasoline sold in the market recently.

Mr. Nguyen Dinh Tuan : Motorbikes increase and gasoline does not guarantee quality, leading to an increase in lead content in air . (Photo: Ng. Thuy)

At the end of August 2007, Ho Chi Minh City Department of Environmental Protection, at the seminar: "Controlling emissions of motorcycles and motorbikes in traffic in big cities" held in Ho Chi Minh City, Branch Ho Chi Minh City Environmental Protection Department has published a worrisome data on the situation of environmental pollution in the city.

That is, the amount of lead in the air measured at the monitoring stations along the roads of Ho Chi Minh City from the beginning of 2006 has increased suddenly, to over 1μg / m ³ , exceeding the allowed level of the Medical Organization. World Health (1μg / m ³ ).

As an expert on air pollution, since the early 90s, Mr. Nguyen Dinh Tuan and his colleagues have conducted a systematic monitoring of the air quality of Ho Chi Minh City. Based on the monitoring results, he said, before, when our country still used leaded gasoline, the lead content in the air was always very high, averaging above 2 mứcg / m ³ , even There are even higher places.

The good news is that, since the State decided to only use unleaded gasoline in 2001, the amount of lead in gas has decreased significantly. For many years from 2002 to 2005, it was always stable at 0.5 μg / m ³ under the WHO criteria.

However, from 2006 until now, the concentration of lead in the air has tended to increase as mentioned above. Why does the amount of lead in the air increase so dramatically?

The changes in lead concentration changed significantly in August 2001 because the Government promulgated the Law on using unleaded petrol, and by June 2005, according to the monitoring results, the lead concentration tended to increase.This can be explained by the significant increase in the amount of vehicles and the quality of the petrol.(Source: Ho Chi Minh City Department of Environmental Protection)

According to Mr. Nguyen Dinh Tuan, there are two reasons for this situation, one is due to the increase in the number of motorbikes in circulation, the second is because the quality of gasoline is not guaranteed, or in other words, there is a quantity of gasoline. Significant lead is sold recently.

Also according to Mr. Tuan, the presence of leaded gasoline in the market is the main reason leading to a sudden increase in the amount of lead in the air in a short time.

How toxic is lead?

The most commonly reported lead pollution is lead in automotive gasoline, in alkyl-lead form, as an anti-knock.When lead is present in different cell enzymes, these enzymes cannot perform their functions in the body.When infected with lead, the body falls into a state of excitement and insomnia, followed by fatigue, depression and constipation.(Source: http://thuvien.ntu.edu.vn)

Proposing measures to control this situation, according to Mr. Tuan, in addition to the functional departments must regularly monitor the quality of imported petroleum, need a strong enough agency and adequate regulations to ensure responsible for controlling air pollution caused by transportation activities.

With the current structure, this responsibility is shared for many units so the results are not high.

On the other hand, the issue of using clean fuels needs to be more concerned. Over the years, we have achieved quite good results in using unleaded gasoline. However, there is a need for further studies and monitoring of pollution when using unleaded gasoline (eg benzene); access to the use of other clean fuels such as gas, electricity, hydrogen, solar energy .

Improving motorbike technology to reduce emissions of pollution from vehicles, using simple measures to reduce fuel evaporation, increase control of emissions from vehicles such as inspection The inspection of smoke emissions, technical inspection of machinery . are measures that can be done immediately and contribute significantly to solving air pollution.