National Policy on Air Quality Management
Air quality monitoring is the key component of the air pollution management. Present air quality monitoring data reveals that there is an increasing trend of air pollution in Colombo, which may also be true for other urban areas in Sri Lanka. It was also estimated that the load of air pollution coming to the atmosphere from the transport sector is increasing rapidly.
Air quality monitoring will be carried out by Central Environmental Authority for ambient air quality. The Central Environmental Authority (CEA) has laboratory for monitoring purpose. The data collected from these programmes will be published by the CEA and used to assist future decision-making.
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The Central Environmental Authority set the national ambient air quality standard in 1994 for pollutants such as SO2, NO2 , PM10 , TSP , Pb , O3 , CO .
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The Central Environmental Authority (CEA) is mandated to monitoring ambient air quality in Sri Lanka. Continuous monitoring of ambient air in the Colombo City was started in December,1996 with the use of 03 state of the art monitoring stations(02 fixed & 01 mobile). CEA has contracted out the operation of the 03 monitoring stations to the National Building Research Organization(NBRO) mainly due to the lack of technical staff at that time. In 1999 a programme has been launched to monitor 5 additional selected towns around the Island, using the mobile station. One of the fixed stations is located in the Fort Railway Station car park in the central (city centre) area of Colombo. The other fixed station is located within the Meteorological Station in Colombo, which is located within a residential area with relatively fewer emission sources and serves for measuring background concentrations. CEA took over the operation of the 03 monitoring stations from NBRO in April,2001.
Monitoring stations are equipped with air quality samplers and meteorological instruments. Air quality sampler can monitor Sulphur dioxide, Oxides of Nitrogen, Carbon monoxide, Ozone, Particulates (PM10), whereas meteorological Instruments can generate data on wind Direction, wind Speed (Horizontal & Vertical), ambient Temperature, precipitation, and solar radiation.
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The CEA has sole responsibility for dissemination of the data from the air quality-monitoring programe. Presently, weekly reports produced by CEA including PM10 is disseminated to the media. A half-yearly trend report on air quality is presented to the Air resource Management Center (AirMAC) established in July,2001by the Ministry of Environment & Natural Resources for information and for any policy decisions. At present data could be obtained from the CEA on payment by any interested institutions.
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