AIR pollution crisis is often framed through traffic congestion, seasonal smog or industrial emissions. Yet, one of its most persistent and structurally embedded drivers lies in the country’s construction economy. As urban expansion accelerates and infrastructure demand rises, fired clay bricks remain the dominant building material. This dependence has turned brick production into a central contributor to air pollution, embedding environmental harm into the process of national development itself.
Brick kilns are not a marginal industry. There are an estimated 7,000–8,000 brick kilns running across the country, supplying the overwhelming majority of construction bricks. In Dhaka and its surrounding areas, studies have attributed a significant share of fine particulate matter, often estimated at around 50–60 per cent of PM2.5 concentration during peak pollution periods, to emissions from brick kilns. This makes the sector one of the largest single sources of urban air pollution, directly linking construction demand to degraded air quality.
This is not simply an environmental issue. It is an economic system. Brick kilns exist because construction demand is continuous, cheap bricks are widely accessible and production costs do not reflect environmental damage. In effect, pollution is not priced into the system. The result is a structurally reinforced cycle; rapid urbanisation increases demand for low-cost materials, which sustains polluting production methods, which in turn imposes health and environmental costs on the wider population.
The consequences are measurable in public health and economic burden. Air pollution is consistently ranked among the highest globally. The World Health Organisation has linked exposure to fine particulate matter with hundreds of thousands of premature deaths annually worldwide, with Bangladesh among the most affected countries. In practical terms, this translates into rising respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease and long-term productivity losses. Research using the Air Quality Life Index estimates that average life expectancy in Bangladesh could be reduced by around five years due to fine particulate pollution, with even higher losses in heavily polluted urban centres such as Dhaka. These costs are rarely reflected in the price of construction materials, but they are borne by households, hospitals and public systems.
Crucially, brick kiln emissions are not evenly distributed. Kiln clusters are often located near peri-urban settlements and agricultural land on the outskirts of major cities, exposing low-income communities and workers to prolonged pollution exposure. This creates an environmental inequality embedded within the construction supply chain: those least responsible for demand often face the highest health risks.
At the same time, alternatives to fired bricks already exist. Compressed earth blocks, stabilised soil blocks and other low-carbon construction materials have been developed and tested in Bangladesh and comparable contexts. These alternatives require significantly less energy, reduce reliance on high-emission kiln firing and can be produced using locally available materials. Yet their adoption remains extremely limited. In practice, alternative construction materials still account for well under one per cent of total brick usage in Bangladesh’s construction sector. The gap between availability and adoption reveals that the constraint is not technological absence, but systemic inertia.
And that inertia is economic rather than technical. The construction sector is risk-averse, and material choices are governed by cost, familiarity and supply chain reliability. Fired bricks dominate because they are institutionally normalised. Developers trust them, contractors are trained to use them and procurement systems are built around them. In contrast, alternative materials face barriers of certification, market trust and inconsistent policy support.
The most significant barrier, however, is the absence of economic signals that reflect environmental cost. Brick production remains cheap because its environmental damage — air pollution, carbon emissions and health impacts — is externalised. This allows polluting materials to remain artificially competitive in the market. Meanwhile, alternative materials receive limited incentives, weak policy backing and little integration into public construction standards. As a result, innovation exists but does not scale.
This shows a broader policy gap. The regulation of brick kilns alone through seasonal restrictions or emission controls cannot resolve a structural demand problem embedded in construction finance and urban planning. What is required is a coordinated shift in how building materials are priced, regulated and incentivised. This includes strengthening standards for low-carbon materials, integrating environmental cost into procurement decisions and creating financial mechanisms that support transition at scale rather than isolated pilot projects.
The construction sector is central to its development trajectory, but it is also one of its least examined climate vulnerabilities. As cities expand and infrastructure demand intensifies, the question is not only how quickly the country builds but also what environmental cost is embedded in what it builds with. Until the economics of construction materials are addressed alongside environmental regulation, the country’s air pollution crisis will continue to be structurally reproduced within the very system that is meant to build its future.
Rafia Tamanna is an editorial assistant at New Age.
