LAHORE: Dr Omar Masud, the CEO of Urban Unit, says that the air quality data of monitoring sensors can make a real impact if its integrated in policymaking.
He was speaking at the session “Developing a National Air Quality Management Framework for Pakistan” during The Air We Breathe conference, organized by Dawn Media on October 11.
He said Urban Unit was collecting air quality data from its sensors from across Pakistan. To a question, he replied that data collection was making a real impact as sometimes the policy did not come from top down but it went up from the bottom. He said while collecting data, they had to take a lot of factors into consideration like population, area etc. He added that the collected data needed to be used for policymaking and taking actions.
“Sensors are making a difference as far as action at the local level is concerned”.
Dr Masud said the Urban Unit was trying to publish its data regularly as much as possible so that the citizens could know what it meant for them. He pointed out that though data was there but they were still finding it hard to integrate it into a policy. He said it was necessary to share the data with the people as the real change would come only through behavioral change that was possible only with availability of information.
He said half of all the monitors installed in the country were in Punjab and the rest were in other three provinces, adding that the Urban Unit was collecting data from all over Pakistan.
Abid Omar of Pakistan Air Quality Index said that people talked about quality of data and number of monitors etc but only one monitor from one data point of one city was required and after that a second one was needed to confirm the reading of the first one.
“The third, fourth, 10th, 100th or 1,000th monitor would not give any new information. That activity becomes academic, scientific.” He said the discussion must move beyond the data and who was collecting it. He pointed out that the Punjab government’s policymaking was weak
Dr Naveed Arshad, director LUMS Energy Institute, said electrical vehicles needed a paradigm change and if you go with the business model, converting fuel stations with charging stations might not work because EVs took a long time to charge.
“One solution is that charging can be done at the workplace or home. That paradigm shift needs to come.
“We know that the air is bad, but what’s next? We also know that transport is one of the major contributors but there is the question whether all kind of transport cause the same level of pollution?”
He said though it was known what percentage of vehicles were causing pollution but it was not confirmed which kind of vehicles were doing that. He said they were trying to find out the type of vehicles that were causing pollution that would make a major impact in reducing pollution.
Dawar Butt, a climate & sustainability expert, moderated the session.
HEALTH CRISIS: Dr Saima Saeed, director Lung Health Programme, Indus Hospital & Health Network, said when she first started working in Pakistan about eight years ago, she was surprised to see the cases of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), some of the common respiratory diseases that patients across the world faced. But in Pakistan it was surprising how much they were rising.
“I was also surprised to see that they were more common among women because in my training in the UK, we learnt that it was caused by smoking but women rate is not that high among women in Pakistan”.
Dr Saeed spoke about rural women contracting the COPD besides they were having shortness of breath and cough and they had irreversible obstruction of lungs and they had COPD.
“The most common factor among them was that they were using biomass to cook food in poorly ventilated homes.”
This disease pattern of indoor pollution was seen in Pakistan, she said and added that the 60pc patients referred to her with respiratory issues symptoms had asthma or COPD.
Pernille Ironside, UNICEF representative in Pakistan, said children were more vulnerable to air pollution and it had become the number two killer of children under the age of five worldwide. She called Pakistan one the most vulnerable country in this regard and that all children in Pakistan were vulnerable to air pollution. She pointed out that air pollution raised the chances of stillbirths or premature births besides the disease like pneumonia.
“According to figures four years ago, 60,000 children were dying of air pollution in Pakistan and people should not be numb to these statistics,” she stressed. She called for decision-making and concerted efforts to counter air pollution.
Dr. Rizwan Naseer, secretary Emergency Services, Punjab, also spoke.
Dr Dapeng Luo, the World Health Organisation Representative in Pakistan, moderated the session.
Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2025.
