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Wednesday | November 04, 2026 | Dhaka

OBHIZATRIK launches 12-month air quality monitoring project

 Staff Reporter
 Published: 12:02 AM, 04 November 2026

OBHIZATRIK Foundation has launched a project to expand air pollution monitoring in Dhaka, with a focus on underserved communities that are vulnerable to the harmful effects of polluted air.

The foundation held an inception meeting of its project, “Breathing Dhaka: Open-Access Hyperlocal PM2.5 Monitoring in Underserved Communities”, at the Department of Environment (DoE) headquarters in Agargaon on Tuesday.

The project is supported by the Air Quality Fund 2026 of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC).

DoE Director General Dr Md Lutfor Rahman attended the meeting as the chief guest. OBHIZATRIK Foundation President Ahmed Imtiaz Jami presented the project’s objectives and implementation plan.

Dr Ahmad Kamruzzaman Majumder, chairman of the Center for Atmospheric Pollution Studies and technical lead of the project, outlined its technical aspects.

Speaking at the meeting, Lutfor Rahman said the initiative would play an important role in monitoring Dhaka’s air quality.

He expressed hope that such efforts would help the capital move out of the list of the world’s most polluted cities.

Jami said the foundation worked with underprivileged communities, many of which were among those most exposed to the harmful effects of air pollution.

He said the project aimed to monitor air quality, engage government and non-government stakeholders, support policy development and raise public awareness through social and behavioural change programmes.

Dr Majumder said PM2.5 monitoring devices would be installed in eight low-income, industrial-adjacent and pollution-vulnerable areas across Dhaka.

The devices will collect data continuously for 12 months. The findings will be regularly cross-validated against data from the Department of Environment, he said.

The collected data will be made publicly accessible, while research papers will also be published based on the findings.

The project aims to establish a monitoring network across different parts of Dhaka, particularly in communities that have long remained underserved in air quality monitoring.

Participants at the inception meeting discussed the implementation strategy, installation of PM2.5 sensors and selection of potential monitoring locations. They also shared recommendations on the project’s implementation and future activities.

Officials from government and non-government development organisations, along with faculty members from Stamford University Bangladesh and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), attended the meeting.

The initiative is expected to generate community-level air quality data to support environmental research, pollution monitoring and evidence-based policymaking.