Coal Plants Make Up Half of Vietnam Goverment’s Blacklist of Polluting Projects NGOs Point Out Urgent Need for Action

Following growing public alarm triggered by a series of major industrial pollution disasters the Ministry of Industry and Trade last week flagged 28 projects – including more than a dozen coal plants – as warranting “special monitoring” due to the risks they pose to the environment. The coal plants, which involve the state-owned power utility Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) or Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PVN), have become flashpoints for public alarm due to widespread pollution affecting public health and other industry sectors such as farming, fishing and tourism.

Is Hanoi more polluted than Beijing?

Aqicn.org, the website which provides real-time figures about the air pollution levels in cities all over the world, showed that the PM2.5 Index (the fine dust particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter) in the air in Hanoi in the last two days reached 388 microgram per cubic meter at maximum and 114 microgram per cubic meter at minimum.

Vietnam’s PM2.5 national standard is 50 microgram per cubic meter. Meanwhile, the level recommended by WHO is 25 micrograms.

This means that the dust concentration in the air in Hanoi in the last days was higher than the allowed level by 2-8 times.