Hanoi (VNA) – Air pollution in Hanoi isreal but there is no basis to say it is at the second highest level inSoutheast Asia, Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Vo TuanNhan claimed at a Government press conference in Hanoi on April 2.
He made the statement in response to reporters’queries about the information that Hanoi is the second most polluted citybehind Jakarta, Indonesia, which raised public concern.
He said in the first quarter of 2019, thecontent of the particulate matter PM2.5 (tiny dust particles that are about 30times smaller than a human hair) in the air of Hanoi exceeded allowed standardsin several days in January, February and March, according to the monitoringresults of the Vietnam Environment Administration and 10 automatic airmonitoring stations of the Hanoi Department of Natural Resources andEnvironment, along with reference to monitoring data from the US Embassy inVietnam.
This is mainly due to heavy traffic density,construction works, production from plants and garbage burning, he said.
The claim that Hanoi has the second highestlevel of air pollution in Southeast Asia came from a report on global airquality of the Green Innovation and Development Centre (GreenID), but it isinaccurate because in the statistics table, there is only data from 20 citiesin four out of the 11 Southeast Asian countries. Therefore, there are no groundsfor such a conclusion, Nhan stressed.
He said Hanoi is pushing ahead with theconstruction of an additional 80 air monitoring stations to measure pollutionacross the city in specific periods.
The Ministry of Natural Resources andEnvironment has worked with local authorities to move polluting facilities outof the city, he said.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has issued a decision onemission standards for cars to minimise the level of emissions of vehicles, headded.
As for environmental issues in landfills, Nhansaid the ministry has supervised the status of waste dumps across the country,focusing on waste discharged from people’s daily activities.
There will be two workshops on solid wastemanagement in April and a national conference to deal with this matter in Junethis year.-VNA
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