Transport

Transport facility created for the convenience of human beings is a great source of air pollution as all the transport vehicles burn some kind of fuels and emit dangerous gases.

The extent of gases produced by an individual vehicle may be less. But, when large number of vehicles are used - the air pollution due to vehicles can be so dangerous that it can raise the amounts of SO₂ and CO to unhealthy level. Breathing such air can be dangerous to health of population.

The dependence on transport facilities has grown with advancement of civilization. In earlier years, the mobility was limited. It was difficult to reach the distant places. But with the advent of use of petroleum products and invention of automotive technology has added great facilities to human mobility. As this technology of automotives spread and as newer vehicles were added - the dependence of automobiles for all the human activities increased.

Due to extreme dependence on automobiles for every possible human activity, large number of varieties of vehicles were added. Today, petroleum based automobiles have largely diversified into:

• public transport vehicles - lorries, buses, trains, trams

• private transport vehicles - cars, vans, scooters, mopeds, motorcycles

The gravity of problem of pollution due to transport vehicles is not the type of vehicles alone but number of vehicles being used per day per unit of geographical area or say per 1000 people. The density of vehicles in a geographical area will add more and more pollutants to air. For this reason, air pollution in thickly populated cities is at a alarming level than thinly populated villages. In most cities, the dependence on transport is more acute than in villages - because of distance factor. Both these factors i.e., density of population and extreme dependence on vehicles in cities have contributed to very high level of air pollution.

According to latest survey, SO₂ levels, CO levels in the air of most Indian cities is well above safe limits indicating high level of vehicular pollution.