Monitoring of Ambient Air Quality of Civil and Military Airports and Their Vicinity

Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong asked the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources (a) whether the Government monitors the ambient air quality of all civil and military airports and their vicinity and keeps track of the pollution index for pollutants like nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides, sulphur oxides, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds; (b) if it does not keep track of any of such pollutants, whether it will consider doing so; and (c) whether such data can be made available to the public.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) monitors and reports the air quality in Singapore through a network of five national air quality monitoring stations across the island. These stations are representative of the ambient air quality of the five regions, within which the civil and military airports are located. Criteria pollutants, namely, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), are continuously monitored and reported on an hourly basis as the Pollutants Standard Index (PSI). In 2018, the air quality in Singapore remained in the "Good" and "Moderate" range for 100% of the days, based on Singapore's PSI readings. The PSI reading is made available every hour on the NEA and haze websites, as well as on myENV app.

Additionally, NEA continuously monitors the ambient concentration of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC), which are typically emitted by the industries. The VOC levels monitored in Singapore are comparable with the major European Union, Japan and United States cities.