The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) has raised concerns about the impact of road transport pollution on public health.
Research by the independent non-profit organisation, estimates that vehicle pollution contributes to one premature death every 13-minutes and one new childhood asthma case every 23-minutes.
The Council’s Senior Researcher Prian Reddy says South Africa’s vehicle emission’s standards have not been updated since 2006.
Reddy says, “How we do these studies, we use remote sensing hardware technology where hardwares are installed in a longer road and we measure the real tail pipe machines of the vehicles as they are driving past.”
He says, “We take snapshots of what pollutants coming out everyday vehicles driving on SA’s roads. One of the strong findings from the study was just measuring the high levels of pollutants coming from minibus taxis in particular, that is because the industry has moved from petrol to diesel and 2nd it’s the age.”
PODCAST | Interview with Reddy on SAFM’s National Briefing programme:
