Smog posing threat to public health, road users.

LAHORE -- Every year, with the arrival of winter season, chemical smoke after mixing with fog, forming a thick cloak of smog, hovering over the roads, particularly during dawn and dusk, causing threat to public health and road users due to toxic gases and hindering visibility.

Smog, which routinely engulfs Lahore and several other cities of the country from November to December, also disrupts airflow and traffic movement on the roads. Resultantly, the economic damage and disruptions in transport logistics causes huge loss to national exchequer.

According to World Health Organization (WHO) report in 2015, approximately 60,000 Pakistanis died of higher levels of toxic, Particulate Matter (PM2.5), which was directly associated with environmental disorders.

The WHO in its report had further revealed that during foggy season, levels of dangerous Particulates Matter (PM2.5), are enough to penetrate deep into lungs and enter into bloodstream, which damages human health by reaching 1,077 micrograms per cubic meter, (more than 30 times what international health experts consider the safe limit).

Talking to reporter, Dr Tehsin Riaz, a noted physician said smog causes itchy-eyes and sore-throat. He said there was clear evidence that polluted air causes depression and Alzheimer's disease, an irreversible brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and harms the ability to carry out the daily routine tasks.

The Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) in its recent report said Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) stations did not provide sufficient information during the smog season, adding, they could only provide reading of fog-points' measurement, and its observations.

Suggesting remedy, the report said continuous monitoring and spatially coherent picture of smog distribution was possible through the use of satellite observations.

A senior official in SUPARCO said space study reports and satellite data of atmospheric pollutants were being used across the globe to overcome smog issues by making decisions in environmental management activities.

Misbah-ul-Haq Khan Lodhi, Director Punjab Environmental Protection Department said Punjab Government ahead of November, had decided to close conventional kilns in consultation with the Smog Commission, which had been tasked to identify the root causes of fog generation, and to formulate a policy by prescribing a plan to protect people's health.

The International Centre for...