THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN AIR EMISSION INVENTORY AND ITS BENEFITS

Abstract

An air emission inventory is an essential planning tool in environmental management of theatr shed. Today the state of the city's and suburhs air shed is fast hecuming unsausfucror,and a recent fundamental rights case initiated by a Non-governmental organisation to drawthe attention to this fact succeeded and has forced the authorities to accelerate implementinggurdclincs and practical steps in a short time span. When reviewing standards It IS <ccn thatwe established certain standards in cases even below the suggested WHO guidelines andimplemented precious little in a technical way thus leading to the gradual deterioration 01the air shed over a period of time.

In all these evaluations an air emission inventory is quite useful as a development planningtool. At present Sri Lanka does not have such an inventory for any region or locality and thesteps taken to develop an inventory for the Sapugaskanda area an area of highindustrialisation is discussed in this paper. Both stationary and mobile sources areconsidered. Some air pollution assessment modelling was done to develop data and thesehave also been validated from the monitoring data available

The need for an Air Quality Index (AQI) is also stressed as this is also a 1111SSll1gelement inthe present management system. A suggested scheme is given and some data IS analyscd forthe indication of air shed quality.