The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) yes­ter­day said the air qual­i­ty in Port-of-Spain had sta­bilised, al­though au­thor­i­ties were still work­ing to put out the re­main­ing fire at the Beetham land­fill.The fire cre­at­ed an­oth­er cloud of tox­ic smoke over the cap­i­tal for a fourth straight day, forc­ing scores of cit­i­zens to flee the city once again.

With re­spect to the air-qual­i­ty tests, the EMA said they mon­i­tored the air for:

�2 par­tic­u­late mat­ter

�2 volatile or­gan­ic com­pounds (VOCs)

�2 car­bon monox­ide

�2 sul­phur diox­ide.

It said par­tic­u­late mat­ter speaks to the size of the par­ti­cles that con­tribute to poor air qual­i­ty and the size of par­ti­cles that will af­fect the most vul­ner­a­ble among the pop­u­la­tion–asth­mat­ics and those with pre­vail­ing lung in­fec­tions. Volatile or­gan­ic com­pounds (VOCs), it not­ed, can be car­cino­genic or can­cer-caus­ing agents, while car­bon monox­ide can cause as­phyx­ia.It as­sured the pub­lic that the tests re­vealed these com­po­nents were at safe and ac­cept­able lev­els, in ac­cor­dance with the EMA's Draft Air Pol­lu­tion Rules, with­in the Port-of-Spain area up to yes­ter­day.The EMA said, how­ev­er, that the test­ing will con­tin­ue and the pub­lic will no­ti­fied if any changes oc­cur.