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ctivists are warning against air pollution in Indonesian cities which they said had reached alarming levels.

Based on daily monitoring, urban residents inhaled healthy air less than two months per year due in large part to poor transportation management.

A group of activists and government officials from the State Ministry for the Environment and the Transportation Ministry established a Forum for Indonesian Clean Air as part of its mission to push for sustainable transportation management to minimize air pollution.

“The air quality has frequently been dangerously unhealthy. The country needs extra efforts to clean the air through sustainable transport management,” Ahmad Safruddin, who initiated the forum, told reporters Tuesday.

Ahmad, who is also the chairman of the Indonesian Lead Information Center (KPPB), said that poor quality of fuels, gas emissions and poor law enforcement were exacerbating the country’s transport system problems.

“The facts show that only Bandung and Semarang residents have been breathing healthy air for more than one month per year since 2001. Other metropolitan areas including Jakarta, Surabaya and Medan enjoy less than 27 days of healthy air [per year],” he said.

Ahmad added that all air pollutant parameters exceeded tolerable limits set by environmental authorities.

Motor vehicles are a major source of air pollutants in Indonesia’s major cities.

The government regularly monitors levels of pollutants, namely particulate matters (PM10), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), lead (Pb) and ozone (O3).

The country has removed the lead content from gasoline.

Lead is a harmful pollutant emitted by gasoline-powered vehicles. It causes adverse health effects ranging from comas to death among adults. Lead can disrupt physical and mental development in children, who are more vulnerable to lead exposure.

Ahmad said the forum would focus on policy reform and public education to improve air quality in the country.

Deputy assistant for pollution emissions control at the State Ministry for the Environment, Ade Palguna, concurred and said air pollution in big cities had reached critical levels.

He said his office also faced difficulties with a limited number of air quality monitoring devices outside the big cities.

“We still face many issues, including lack of human resources, poor quality of the [measuring] devices, and weak law enforcement,” he said.

The ministry installed air quality monitoring equipment in Jakarta, Bandung, Denpasar, Medan, Pekanbaru, Pontianak, Palangkaraya, Semarang, Surabaya and Jambi several years ago.
The 2009 Traffic Law requires all vehicles operating in Indonesia to meet government emissions standards.

Indonesia has claimed that it has implemented the low emissions Euro II standard since 2008, requiring sulphur content in diesel fuels to be kept at or below 500 parts per million (ppm).

The Euro II standard also obliges all cars to use catalytic converters designed to control the amount of pollutants emitted from their exhaust systems.

However, many luxury and new vehicles still used subsidized diesel containing pollutants, including sulphur.

The ministry’s study shows that 50 percent of 7,865 diesel fuel vehicles tested in 2008 failed to meet tolerable emissions standards because they used subsidized fuel.