New Delhi: The pressing issue of escalating urban air pollution in India, a grave health hazard, demands immediate and robust regulations to curb vehicle emissions. This urgent call to action is underscored by a recent study conducted by experts at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, released on Wednesday.
In India, the primary culprit behind urban air pollution is the emissions from motor vehicles, a factor that significantly impacts our environment.
Vehicles consume more fuel and produce (more) pollutants the longer they are on the road.
However, not all cars emit the same amount of pollutants; some emit a disproportionately higher amount.
The study looked into the variables that affect high-emitting cars, or super-emitters, as they are also called.
“Until now, there has been no study in India that has examined the share of super-emitters in real-world vehicular fleets. The previous studies assumed their share based on literature from other countries or secondary data. The motivation was to reduce uncertainty in the emission estimation from real-world vehicular fleets,” said Sohana Debbarma, a researcher who conducted the study. The findings of this study have significant implications for policy recommendations to reduce urban air pollution in India.
According to the researchers, the super-emitters are heavy-duty vehicles that are either overweight, old, poorly maintained, or all three.
When measured against other cars in the fleet, they emit noticeably more pollutants.
The IIT-Bombay study states that the age of the vehicles and engine maintenance may impact whether a light-duty vehicle—that is, a vehicle weighing less than 3,500 kg, such as cars, two-wheelers, three-wheelers, and light commercial goods vehicles—is a super-emitter.
The overloading condition of heavy-duty vehicles (those weighing more than 3,500 kg, including buses and trucks), in addition to their age and upkeep, is a factor in the disproportionately high emissions of pollutants.
The Kamshet-I tunnel, part of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, has entry and departure points where the researchers stationed their pollution-measuring apparatus for the study.
Non-exhaust emissions from tyre, brake, and road surface wear, as well as road dust resuspension, were gathered in addition to exhaust emissions from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels.
High-definition video cameras and manually gathered vehicle registration number data were used to get the traffic data.
Over two weeks, data for the study was gathered.
The researchers manually discovered super-emitters, using video surveillance records of the traffic going through the tunnel as a basis for their analysis.
“Vehicles that emitted a visible plume of smoke or appeared overloaded were identified as super-emitters. It was also validated using the information on the age of the vehicles and type of emission technology: Bharat Stages (BS) – II, III, and IV (the study was conducted in 2019 when there were no BS VI vehicles) and the type of fuel (petrol, diesel, and CNG),” the team said.
–IANS
