Vehicular emission only making matters worse: Study

Air quality in Indian cities is deteriorating by the day and increased level of vehicular emission is making matters worse and posing risk to human health, according to a new study.
"Vehicular emissions are going to grow manifold and will offset the impact of control measures taken in the past. The resulting emissions will only make the air quality worse than the current levels which are already alarmingly high," it says.
The study, conducted by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), TERI University and The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), was released today.
According to it, vehicles are an important source of air pollutants like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter (PM), volatile organic compounds, and greenhouse gases emissions.

"Many of these pollutants undergo further reactions in the atmosphere, which leads to increased smog levels; and this substantially affects human health and the environment at large," it says.
R K Pachauri, Director General of TERI said that stringent approach for controlling vehicular emissions through benchmarking of technology and regulation can bring about major improvements.

The study says that numerous factors influence trends in pollution from the transportation sector and associated health impacts.
"The existence of parallel standards, one for major cities and another, less stringent, for the rest of the country, has undermined efforts to address urban air quality problems and weakened the integrity of overall policy," it says.

"A lack of effective inspection and maintenance programs, and of in-use compliance testing, undercuts new-vehicle emissions standards over time. Inadequate registration data complicates efforts to regulate the vehicle fleet," the study says.
It further says that the steady growth in passenger car market share of diesel vehicles drives increases in PM and NOx emissions.