When it comes to sweeping the ground, angle matters. “People may
have seen street-sweeping trucks spray water on the road, but
afterwards the dust tends to remain where it was, and once the
water dries off, the dust is blown around and covers cars and
pedestrians,” Environmental Protection Minister Steven Shen
(沈世宏) said yesterday. To resolve this problem, the Environmental
Protection Administration’s department of air quality protection
and noise control spent six months to improve the nozzles fitted
on street-sweeping trucks to find the best angle for sweeping
dust to the side of the road, Shen said. The nozzles on the
trucks normally spray water directly downward, which is not
effective in dislodging dust on the road, said Ben Huang (黃超群),
the manager of New Systems Environmental Technology Company, the
firm the administration commissioned to solve the problem. Huang
said his team realized that the nozzles needed to squirt water
at an angle to dislodge dirt from the road surface so that it
can be washed aw