City gasps under unhealthy air

Big cities of Punjab have entered the pre-smog season with air pollution already reaching unhealthy levels. The situation has caused fear that the provincial capital could face another winter pollution crisis. Enforcement agencies are struggling to monitor pollution from small units, workshops and commercial activities scattered through residential and industrial areas. The Punjab Environmental Protection Agency's real time monitoring system in Lahore recorded an AQI of 187 at 8am on Tuesday, placing the city in the "unhealthy for sensitive groups" category. The update at 11am showed Lahore's overall AQI at 167, in the same category. Lahore stood fourth among the monitored cities of Punjab, behind Chiniot with an AQI of 183, Narowal 174 and Gujrat 170. The situation was worse at several locations in the metropolis with DHA Phase 6 recording an AQI of 224 and Multan Road 221, falling in the unhealthy category. Safari Park recorded 199, Kahna Nau 197, GT Road 196, Wagha Border 195 and Shahdara 192. The city's seven-day peak had reached 246 a couple of days ago. A separate ranking reportedly placed Lahore at the top of the world's most polluted cities with an AQI of 207. The reading was different from the EPA's monitoring figures, underlining how rankings can vary with monitoring networks and the time of measurement. The deterioration has occurred well before the traditional peak of the smog season. The EPA identifies the smog season broadly as October to February with crop residue burning vehicle and industrial emissions, brick kiln smoke and construction dust among the major contributors. Pollution is being generated simultaneously by traffic, factories, brick kilns, construction, road dust, commercial kitchens, waste burning and agricultural activities in and around the city. One of the least visible challenges is the large number of small industrial units and workshops operating at different locations. While large factories can be identified and inspected easily, small manufacturing units, furnaces, metal workshops, foundries, chemical businesses and other combustion-based activities are spread across industrial estates as well as mixed residential and commercial areas. Authorities are struggling in implementing anti-pollution steps, including sealing of industrial units over violations. The enforcement challenge is whether the regulatory machinery has sufficient manpower, equipment and continuous surveillance to identify every significant source of emissions. The department has also deployed thermal drones, day and night enforcement squads and technology-based monitoring to locate sources of emissions. Officials have intensified action with 37 brick kilns and 11 industrial units inspected over a 24-hour period. Several were sealed for violations, while legal action against one unit resulted in an FIR and a Rs500,000 worth of fine. Authorities also inspected 34 barbecue and other commercial cooking sites with nine sealed for non-compliance. However, a limited number of inspections cannot by themselves establish continuous compliance across the entire urban and peri-urban industrial network. An environmentalist, Dr Munawar Sabir, said, "Normally, the pre-smog season begins in Lahore and other big cities of the province in the last week of September. Small factories operate intermittently, particularly those producing visible smoke during evening or night hours, posing a monitoring challenge.