EPA devises plan to save Islamabad from smog risks.

ISLAMABAD -- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked out a plan to prevent serious risks of the sixth smog season in the federal capital.

An EPA official told reporter that the plan would be submitted to the climate change ministry and would be implemented consequently.

He said main source of air pollution in the federal capital were steel manufacturing units, vehicular emissions whereas the agency had managed to control dark emissions from steel furnaces in the federal capital.

'At present, most of the air pollution is mainly due to increased vehicular emissions and unbridled cars entering in the federal capital,' he added.

The EPA, he added, had issued notices to public and private departments with large fleets of buses plying on the roads of the federal capital to maintain their vehicles to avoid dark smoke releases from their vehicles.

The other sources were solid and hospital wastes burning however, in order to cope with mismanagement in hospital waste dumping process, EPA had started collecting data of hospitals' incinerators to limit their burning temperatures to avoid air pollution, he added.

To a question, he said it was the job of Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad and Capital Development Authority to control the open burning of solid waste.

He said over 100 hospitals in the federal capital were sharing their waste management data with the agency.

He told that under the Hospital Waste Management Rules 2005, all the public and private hospitals in the federal...