According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport, the numbers of registered vehicles have increased by 10.42 percent within just one year, causing grave concern and worsening environmental pollution in the city.

Increase in vehicular traffic has worsened pollution in HCM City. (Photo: SGGP)

 At present, the city has 5.7 million new registered vehicles, of which 21,000 were registered in May alone. In all, there are more than 509,000 automobiles and 5.2 million motorcycles in the city.

Presuming that an automobile uses an average of one liter gasoline and a motorcycle uses 0.5 liter of gasoline a day, the city is consuming more than 3 million liters of petrol each day.

Thus, huge amounts of exhaust fumes discharged every single day into the city atmosphere are causing great harm to human health.

The Vietnam Environment Administration has reported that vehicular traffic alone discharges 85 percent of CO2, 95 percent of VOC and other toxic gases into the air.

Small concentrated particles of toxic substances are released from motorbikes at crossroads in large cities of Vietnam, which are above permissible levels of pollution.  

These particles easily penetrate into lungs and blood vessels to cause heart and respiratory diseases, lung cancer and asthma. Vehicular traffic alone discharges 70 percent of the exhaust fume volume in the country.

Exhaust fumes are one of the main factors causing climate change. Several international scientific organizations have warned that Ho Chi Minh City is among ten cities in the world that will be worst affected by climate change.

Source: SGGP