Impact of National Movement Control Orders toward Ground Level Ozone Concentrations in Shah Alam

Abstract

Malaysia is currently facing the COVID-19 pandemic which has claimed hundreds of innocent lives. Because of the health problems impose by the pandemic, the government has ordered to implement the movement control order (MCO) starting March 18, 2020. With this movement control order in place, people are not allowed to leave the house. Therefore, movement on the road can also be reduced. This study was conducted to investigate the emission concentrations of ground-level ozone into the air during MCOs in an urbanized area of Shah Alam. This secondary data of ground-level ozone (O3) was acquired from the Department of Environment in 2020 and interpreted using the methods of box and whisker plot, time series analysis, and diurnal variation plot. The results found that the concentrations of air pollutants in each type of MCOs implemented were different in terms of trends. During the early implementations of MCOs, results showed that there was a slight decrement in O3 concentrations and as MCOs periods continued, there higher decrements in O3 concentrations were observed. During the MCOs period, non-exceedance episodes were recorded which show the level of ground-level ozone was significantly improved result of the implementation of MCOs. Results also suggested there is a shift in the peak concentration time as the plot showed peak concentrations were reached between 4 to 6 p.m. which is quite later as normally peaks O3 concentrations were reported normally reached from 12 noon to 2 p.m.