Dhaka, Nov 21 (bdnews24.com) – Air pollution is linked to more than 10 percent of unnatural deaths in Bangladesh, environmental scientists said on Saturday.

Speakers at a seminar Saturday, referring to a recent Country Environment Analysis by World Bank, said as many as 22 percent of unnatural deaths in Bangladesh are caused by environmental factors.

They said half of the deaths attributed to environmental factors are caused by air pollution.

The seminar, titled 'Environmental Pollution: A Dhaka Perspective', also heard that winter levels of air pollution in Dhaka was "the worst in the world".

Thousands of lives can be saved each year by cutting air pollution in the capital, said M Khaliquzzaman, an environmental scientist with the World Bank

An estimated 15,000 premature deaths a year are attributed to poor air quality in Dhaka, according to an Air Quality Management Project (AQMP), funded by the government and the World Bank.

Khaliquzzaman said as many as 3,300 of these deaths, and treatment of more than 80 million illnesses a year, could be prevented through the reduction of air pollution in the capital. This alone would save 0.34 to 1.0 per cent of the national income.

Speakers at the seminar, hosted by the French-Bangladesh Association of Scholars and Trainees at Sheraton Hotel, stressed the need to introduce CNG-run vehicles across the country, not just in the capital Dhaka.

WB's Khaliquzzaman also observed that the city's air would be more tolerable now if diesel-run vehicles—such as the old auto rickshaws, as well as the thousands of buses and trucks that still use the highly polluting fuel—were converted into CNG-run ones much earlier.

He pointed out that a diesel-run engine causes ten times more air pollution than a CNG-run one.

Eighty per cent of Dhaka's air pollution is caused by vehicles and around 20 percent from brick kilns in and around the city, he said.

BUET assistant professor Zia Wadud said 5,200 deaths have been prevented in the city since 2007 through the conversion of diesel-run vehicles into CNG-run ones.

An estimated 80, 000 diesel-run auto rickshaws were taken off the streets of Dhaka in 2007 and replaced with vehicles that run on Compressed Natural Gas.

It cut air pollution by nine per cent, said Wadud.

He said the measure had also saved around Tk 100 crore, or 1.4 per cent of GDP, in fuel and health costs.

But, Wadud said, air quality in Dhaka in winter remains among the worst, if not "the worst", in the world despite the move to convert auto rickshaws as well as private vehicles to run on CNG in a huge move to curb air pollution.

High levels of toxic particulates are carried in the air throughout the year Dhaka, but the air is most polluted the dry winter months of November and December. It lessens during the rainy season, said Wadud.

French ambassador Charley Causeret and National Chest Disease Institute's Dr Asif Mujtaba Mahbub, among others, also spoke at the seminar.

Causeret said the seminar was very timely with the Copenhagen Climate Conference just weeks away.

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