Environmental pollution towards the workplace in the Philippines

ABSTRACT

Introduction@#Air pollution is an emerging global concern, especially in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions; smoke-belching and emissions from vehicles on the road are associated with air pollution. In the Philippines, the Clean Air Act of 1999 was passed to address the growing concern for poor air quality to cover mobile sources such as vehicles. @*Objective@#This study aimed to come up with a descriptive analysis of emissions of vehicles as this has an impact on air pollution and road-environmental safety. @*Methodology@#This study analyzed a secondary database of vehicle emissions violation cases from the Land Transportation Organization (LTO) office in Region 11, the Philippines. The study was retrospective in nature and involved a review of traffic violation cases. The data were encoded and analyzed using the SPSS ver. 23 software program. @*Results@#Two hundred eighty-two vehicle emission standard violations were recorded by the Land Transportation Office (LTO) from 2018 to 2019. Most cases were from 2018 (72.7%), with January (30.9%) recorded the highest number of unsafe vehicle emission standard violation cases. Of the apprehended drivers, the majority (88.3%) were of the driving professional license category. All the drivers (100.0%) were caught due to the violation of smoke-belching (V16). In comparison, a small proportion was also seen as cases of driving without a valid driver’s license or conductor’s permit (1.8%) and failure to carry driver’s license/OR/CR (0.8%). All the violators were caught on daytime working and rush hours, between 600 am and 500 pm. More than half of the apprehended drivers’ vehicles (55.3%) were classified as for hire, while the remaining (41.8%) were classified as private vehicles. The majority (99.3%) of the vehicles did not pass the first emissions standards. Meanwhile, the most common vehicles caught for unsafe emissions were UV vehicles (n = 239). The vehicles caught for dangerous emissions were more than ten years old, with one-third (35.9%) of the vehicles were between 10 to 19 years old. The mean years of use or age of the vehicle were 15.724 ± 8.553 years. Opacity results for the first emission testing were 6.691 ± 2.404, while the Average Light Absorption (ALA) coefficient for the second emissions testing was 1.102 ± 0.577. @*Conclusion@#This study provided an overview of unsafe vehicle emissions within an urban city and suggested a need for more robust monitoring of vehicle emissions within safe limits. Vehicles that do not meet safety standards should not be allowed on the road, and disposal of old inefficient running vehicles may be beneficial in reducing dangerous air pollution.