“Seasonal Air Quality Dynamics in Urban Slums of Dhaka Metropolitan Area”

Abstract

Bangladesh being a developing country in South Asia, is facing the challenge of air pollution for a long time now. The capital city Dhaka stands out within top 3 polluted cities in the entire earth. Inside Dhaka metropolitan area, the slums are often regarded as the most polluted locations. Still these areas are not explored properly in terms of slum-specific air pollution state. Thus, this study measures air pollution at 5 major slum areas of the Dhaka metropolitan area i.e. Shagufta, Bauniabadh, Bhasantek, Korail and Ceramic Bazar through an air quality monitoring system (AQMS) installed in each site for 2025. The collected data include values of particulate matter ((PM1, PM2.5, PM4, PM10), gaseous substances (CO2, NO2, SO2) and atmospheric variables (temperature and relative humidity). The collected data was taken into Microsoft excel and cleaning process was performed. Then the data for these variables were grouped by four seasons i.e., summer, monsoon, post-monsoon and winter and after analysis using RStudio, these were compared among the slum locations. This revealed that Korail, Bhasantek and Ceramic bazar are comparatively more polluted in terms of particulate matter, whereas Shagufta is more polluted by other gaseous traces. The analysis indicates winter as the most polluted season and monsoon as the least. Pearson's correlation analysis revealed the interconnectedness among these variables, where particulate matter exhibited high positive correlation with one another. Principal component analysis revealed particulate matter as the dominant pollutant. Under these circumstances, the study provides slum-specific recommendations e.g., awareness campaign, waste management etc.