Coal pollution grips coastal Bangladesh as safeguards fail

"A review of Payra’s stack emissions test documents from 2021 to 2025 shows the Department of Environment’s (DoE) Barishal Divisional Office never once carried out a stack emission test. For ambient air quality, only suspended particulate matter was checked with any regularity; sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides were tested just once, in 2021.

And that year’s results were hardly reassuring: One reading put particulate matter at 310 micrograms per cubic meter, well above the 200- μg/m³ standard. A second test on Oct. 24, 2021, recorded 188.12 μg/m³ — still close to the limit — with officials noting the test had been conducted in “half-rainy weather”.

The reason for the gap, according to the Barishal office’s senior chemist, Md Golam Kibria, is straightforward: “The office simply cannot do the work.”

“We have a mandate for air, sound and liquid quality tests. But in our laboratory in Barishal, we cannot test air and liquid, though it is mandatory to test them twice a year,” Kibria says."

https://www.eco-business.com/news/coal-pollution-grips-coastal-bangladesh-as-safeguards-fail/