Dhaka’s streets are alive with energy, noise and movement. But behind this restless pulse lies a suffocating truth. The city’s air is being poisoned every day by the smoke-belching buses that dominate its roads.
Old, unregulated and poorly maintained, these buses have turned into mobile chimneys that darken the skyline and endanger the health of millions.
A walk along any major road makes the picture painfully clear. Buses with broken windows and rusted frames lurch forward, coughing out thick black smoke with every acceleration. Inside, the seats are worn, and the air is suffocating.
Outside, pedestrians and passengers are forced to inhale fumes heavy with particulate matter and sulphur dioxide; pollutants that trigger asthma, chronic bronchitis and other long-term respiratory diseases. For children and the elderly, the risks are even greater.
This is not just about discomfort. It’s about survival in a city where breathing itself is becoming hazardous. Dhaka’s infamous traffic jams mean people spend hours trapped in this toxic cloud, their lungs absorbing what the city fails to regulate.
Beyond human health, the relentless smoke adds to the city’s environmental decline, threatening its already fragile ecosystem.
What makes this crisis worse is its preventability. With proper regulation, fitness checks and gradual phasing out of these unfit buses, the problem could be contained. Instead, lax enforcement has allowed the streets to fill with vehicles that would be condemned anywhere else.
Unless authorities act swiftly and decisively, Dhaka risks becoming a city where the simple act of drawing breath comes at a cost. Clean air is not a luxury; it’s a right. And right now, that right is being stolen from millions every day.
