Vietnam to build additional 98 air quality monitoring stations till 2030

The new stations will be operating alongside the exiting 106 stations to create a complete air quality monitoring system in the country.

The target has been set in the National Environmental Monitoring Planning till 2030 that was recently approved by the Prime Minister.

Among the to-be-built stations, 62 facilities will be installed in localities subject to a lot of human impact to warn people’s health effects. Six regional facilities will be built in areas with little human impact.

The stations will monitor the ambient air quality and pollution automatically and continuously, including dust PM 2.5, PM 10, SO2, NO2, CO, and O3.

The objective of the planning is to build a synchronous, advanced and modern national environmental monitoring system that can monitor key areas of inter-regional, inter-provincial and cross-border nature.

It will strengthen connectivity with the provincial environmental monitoring system, and meet requirements for publicizing information and environmental monitoring data and improving warning and forecasting capacity.

Air quality is a special concern as it has many implications for occupational and public health. Air pollution is increasingly alarming and directly affects human health.

Vietnam is ranked 36th out of 177 countries with the highest pollution levels globally. According to Iqair statistics, PM2.5 fine dust concentration in Vietnam exceeds 4.9 times the guaranteed air level.

Currently, the amount of PM2.5 dust in many provinces and cities exceeds the authorized level. Recently, Hanoi was placed second among the worst air-polluted cities in the world.