Denpasar’s Air Quality Deteriorating: Bali

By Barrie | August 3rd, 2007 | No Comments

The air quality in Denpasar is for now healthy enough to breathe, but the rising number of motorists crowding the city’s roads is slowly polluting it, forcing the city’s environment agency to tighten the regulation on vehicle toxic emissions.

“The primary source of air pollution in Denpasar is vehicle emissions,” the agency’s head of pollution control I Gusti Agung Putri Yadnyawati said.

Given the poor public transportation, Denpasar is a lucrative market for automotive producers.

The number of vehicles in Bali was less than 600,000 in 2002 but that figure has today soared to more than 1,400,000.

“The rising number of vehicles entering Bali is a great challenge for us,” Yadnyawati said.

The agency had recently tested the emissions of 1,645 vehicles in the city and found that only 715 or 43 percent of them passed the test.

Most of the vehicles that used diesel did not meet the standard set by the agency.

“From the 593 diesel vehicles that we tested, only 125 passed,” she said.

“We urge motorists to check their vehicles more regularly and the administration could limit the number of vehicles on the road.”

Compared to the heavily-polluted cities of Jakarta and Surabaya, the air quality in Bali is much better thanks to a lack of factories.

Yadnyawati said the agency had tried to keep the air clean by planting more trees and conserving the city’s greenbelts.

“The air here is not as bad as in other cities.”

Despite Bali’s air quality being slightly better than Jakarta’s, car exhausts have none-the-less seen an increase in local residents suffering respiratory diseases, Yadnyawati said.

The Sanglah Public Hospital said 1,271 people were admitted to hospital because of respiratory diseases in the first half of this year.

“Respiratory diseases are not always caused by exposure to vehicle exhausts. But it is indeed one of the causes,” a medical record official at the hospital said.

He said many of these patients had been exposed to dust, especially those living in areas where carving was prevalent.

The province’s largest hospital has recorded three deaths from respiratory diseases in the last three months.

“A polluted environment is of course to blame for such diseases,” the official said.

Respiratory diseases such as asthma and bronchitis are related to toxic carbon monoxide produced by vehicles.

The nitrogen oxide vehicles produce can also cause dizziness and headaches, which attacks public vehicle drivers.

The Bali administration has implemented the free-lead gasoline bylaw since 2003 in the hope it could better its air quality, which is in line with the government’s national plan to reduce the level of carbon monoxide nationwide.

Championed as the one of the world’s most prestigious tourism destinations, Bali is struggling to deal with environmental issues. The erosion damaging most of the island’s beaches is one of the main concerns.

The island is set to host the international conference on global warming, where the world’s leaders have been challenged to find a way to stop the inconvenient truth around climate change.

Ary Hermawan