PNGCars

Have you found yourself or your kids coming down more with strong chest coughs and complaints? Do your eyes continuously get red and irritated?

The culprit could be the increasing amount of car fumes in our cities, especially Port Moresby.

Sometimes if you walk through Rainbow Estate area or lower Waigani or thereabouts in the morning, you will see this white mist all over the place. The only problem with this mist is that it is warm and sometimes smells. This isn’t fog or anything natural like that. It’s a mixture of car fumes and humidity. And daily, we suck all that un-burnt fuel, carbon monoxide and pollution into our lungs.

Everyday, we are seeing more and more cars, buses, trucks, belching clouds of white and black fumes out of their exhaust. As well as effecting the environment, it is also having a massive effect on our health.

In a study by the World Health Organization on the effects of car fumes on people living in France, Austria & Switzerland, they found that more people are dying from respiratory or cardiovascular problems attributed to car fumes  rather than from car crashes every year.

“The research found that one third of all harmful particulate air pollution was caused by road transport, and that long term exposure to pollution caused an estimated 21,000 premature deaths a year across the three countries. “

“In addition, the researchers calculated that the car fumes caused 300,000 extra cases of bronchitis in children, and 15,000 extra hospital admissions for heart disease made worse by the pollution.
They calculated that the cost of dealing with all this was £27 billion Euros per year - about £16bn. “ (Source BBC news).

Imagine what the cost is to our health is in PNG?

As our economy grows expect traffic pollution to also increase.

What makes the fumes?

When fuel burns in a combustion engine, ideally the bi-products should be carbon dioxide, water and energy since it is made up of hydrocarbons.  However the fuel we use has additives like the sulphur in Diesel or lead in Petrol.

When diesel burns it produces a nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur compounds. When the nitrogen and sulphur compounds mix with water it produces sulphuric or nitric acid.

At the same time, some car engines do not fully combust the fuel and produce carbon dioxide, carbon, carbon monoxide and water from the fuel. This is released into the environment via the car exhaust.

Petrol is more dangerous of the two fuels because many times it does not go through complete combustion and ends up releasing more fumes and unburnt fuel. ( please note petrol engine exhaust is less visible than diesel engine exhaust).

All these fumes affect the lining of a our respiratory tract when we breath in, inflaming it and making it hard to breath, leading to cases of severe bronchitis and exacerbating attacks for asthma.

Also acute carbon monoxide poisoning by exhaust fumes can cause death.

Some Things You Can Do To Reduce Car Fumes.

1.    Use Fuels that do not have lead or sulphur. Most fuel in PNG has no lead or sulphur content (but I need to verify that).

2.    Install a catalytic convertor in your car exhaust system. This technology removes the bad stuff from your cars exhaust fumes and recirculates unburnt fuel.

3.    Drive a car that has a computerized controlled combustion or an electronic fuel injection. These systems reduce incomplete combustion in a car engine, saving you fuel, money and the environment as well.

4.    Use Public Transport, walk, ride a bicycle when you can.

5.    Keep your car engine tuned and do regular checks on your vehicle.

6.    Replace the air filter on your car.

7.    Keep your tires properly inflated. One tire underinflated has been shown to increase fuel consumption by 1 percent, leading to 1 percent extra fumes in the air.

8.    Unless you are in traffic, don’t have your car running in idle.  10 seconds of idling uses more fuel than starting your car. It also pumps unnecessary waste into the environment.

9.     Don’t Top up Your Fuel Tank. Fuel evaporation not only costs you money, its costs the environment and our health as well.

10.    Drive a small car when you can. Small cars burn less fuel and emit less pollution.

Something that the State can do

1.    Introduce Laws to reduce car pollution in PNG. This may mean large spot fines for cars with bad exhausts etc.

2.    Develop Public Transport Systems. Trains, Trams and more efficient PMVs, can improve the transport in the cities and reduce pollution as more people take the services. Currently, we avoid PMV’s if we can because it is such as hassle.

3.    Awareness Campaigns on Minimising Car Pollution.  


Things You Can Do to minimize the amount of fumes you breath in.

1.    Wind the window up when sitting in congested traffic.

2.    If in a closed space, switch engine on only when there is ventilation.

3.    Buy a gas mask.

Share your thoughts below

Read More Articles here

Port Moresby City Government Launches Bus Service 

Interesting Statistics on PNG Road Safety 

A guide to the Japanese Export Market