ROAD TRANSPORT AND
ITS IMPACTS ON
ENVIRONMENT AND
HEALTH
Dr. Mohammed Raza Mehdi
NED UNIVERSITY OF ENGINEERING
AND TECHNOLOGY,
KARACHI
INTRODUCTION
• The environmental impact of transport is
because it is a major user of energy, and burns
most of the world's petroleum. This creates air
pollution, including nitrous oxides and
particulates, and is a significant contributor to
global warming through emission of carbon
dioxide, for which transport is the fastestgrowing emission sector. By subsector, road
transport is the largest contributor to global
warming.
• An increase in Road Traffic leads to adverse
effects on environment.
• These effects may include Air Pollution, Noise
Pollution and Habitat Fragmentation.
• Here we are going to discuss about the first two
i.e. Air and Noise Pollution.
AIR
POLLUTION
At large, it is globally acceptable that air pollution
has serious impacts on human health and causes
various disorders.
Repetitive occurrence and intensive incidence of
diseases in the vicinity of highly polluted zones
particularly, ascertain the distinct association of
diseases/disorders and air pollution.
• The diseases that emerged as highly associated with air
pollution are mostly the disorder of respiratory system
The respondents of survey were largely suffering from
Headache, Hypertension, Eye ailments, Chronic
Influenza, Stress and Tonsillitis. While Nausea, Chronic
Cough, Hearing Loss, Learning Loss and Palpitation
were prevalent disorders to a lesser extent found in the
respondents.
MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY
• Morbidity (meaning "sick, unhealthy") is a diseased
state, disability, or poor health due to any cause. The
term may be used to refer to the existence of any form of
disease, or to the degree that the health condition affects
the patient.
• Mortality is a ratio of the number of deaths (in general,
or due to a specific cause) in a population, scaled to the
size of that population, per unit of time.
Table 2: Indoor Morbidity and Mortality
Statistics 2001 in Karachi
Data Source: Medical Record and Statistical Office, Civil Hospital, Karachi
KDA
The analysis zones determined by the then Karachi
Development Authority served as the precinct of
metropolitan Karachi. Figure 2 maps the disease
occurrence for Karachi. The higher occurrence of air
pollution based diseases in the study area was in the
district Karachi Central, specifically, North Karachi
(Zone # 31), F. C. Area and Mansoora / F B Area (Zone
#28). The affected zones of district Karachi East were
Garden, Soldier Bazaar, Jamshed Quarters (Zone #11),
Korangi (Zone#39), Landhi Colony (Zone#40) and
Akhtar and Baloch Colony, Chanesar Goth (Zone #25).
In district Karachi South, which comprises of mostly the
old city (core) localities of Karachi, Saddar and Artillery
maidan (Zone # 3) had the highest occurrence of
airborne diseases. Orangi, Metroville-I (Zone#30) of
district Karachi West posses a significant disease
problem.
Table 2 : Indoor Morbidity and
Mortality Statistics of Airborne
Diseases 2000 and 2001 in Karachi
Data Source: Statistical Department, Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre,
Karachi.
EPIDEMIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
• Air pollution contributes to mortality and
morbidity.
• Thousands of patients are daily catered at the
Out Patient and Emergency departments.
• More than two thousands Indoor patients have
been found affected by air-induced disorders in
last two years.
POPULATION DENSITY IN KARACHI
ROAD DENSITY IN KARACHI
TRAFFIC POLLUTION RISK
NOISE
POLLUTION
Noise is continuous nuisance in the urban areas of both
developed and developing countries and seriously affects the
environmental quality of exposed people. Karachi as one of
the growing cities of the world, producing high noise levels,
which are seriously damaging the environmental quality.
We selected 308 sites at major junctions to measure
levels of noise exposure and to monitor the volumes
of traffic. Karachi city experienced severe traffic
congestions around those intersections. Field survey
was conducted during morning, afternoon and
evening for two weeks. Each intersection was
geocoded in ArcGIS 9.3 The survey period
represented normal traffic volume excluding holiday
seasons such as Ramadan, Eid, etc. The levels of road
traffic noise were collected with Noise Dosimeter
(Micro-14, Quest Technologies, U.S.A.). We created
noise surface maps of each time period from the field
measurements to provide a view of noise exposure
levels for non-measured areas within Karachi City.
FIELD MEASUREMENT(308)
Noise levels at different days and times
(a) weekday morning, (b) weekday afternoon, (c) weekday evening, (d) weekend
morning, (e) weekend afternoon and (f) weekend evening.
NOISE RISK AREAS IN KARACHI
On the resultant risk map, there are 4 significant regions of
very high-risk in red colour identified as A, B C and D.
These include core /old city areas of the Karachi (i.e.
Saddar / Empress market) and sections adjacent to the
4 chief arterials of Karachi.( M. A. Jinnah , Shr-e Faisal,
Liaqatabad and University Roads) . The deduced very
high risk region (VHRR) is characterized by bus
terminals/transfer station, dense network of roads,
crowded retail markets, thousands of commuters, a lot of
pedestrians, long queued vehicles, mixed land use and
high-rise buildings all around. The commercial activity
of these parts of the city involves unavoidable trips,
therefore, the real human population at risk is difficult to
quantify. Moreover, there is no recent, authentic
pedestrian data available and this study possesses the
census figures of the population counted as ‘resident’.
• The incidence of noise-borne diseases is very high in
high risk areas (HRR). It is recommended that city
planners and decision-makers could use geospatial
technology to control traffic and land use in such a
manner that could limit the noise levels within WHO
defined bearable thresholds.
HABITAT FRAGMENTATION
Roads can act as barriers or filters to animal
movement and lead to habitat fragmentation.
Many species will not cross the open space
created by a road due to the threat of predation
and roads also cause increased animal mortality
from traffic. This barrier effect can prevent
species from migrating and recolonising areas
where the species has gone locally extinct as well
as restricting access to seasonally available or
widely scattered resources.
CONCLUSION
• The linkages between Transport, Environment and
Health are well established.
• In land transportation, Rail mode is more environment
friendly than Road vehicular traffic.