Ventilation equipment worth $1.2 million must be installed at three Winnipeg Transit garages to bring them up to health and safety standards, the city has been told.

Transit Director Rick Borland said concentrations of nitrogen dioxide that exceed provincial health standards have been found in transit's Fort Rouge St. James and North Main storage garages.

The garages are used to store the city's 535-bus fleet.

Borland said readings at the Fort Rouge garage have identified nitrogen dioxide levels twice as high as the allowable provincial limit.

The gas is a component of diesel exhaust fumes.

Borland said provincial officials have not issued a formal order requiring the city to upgrade ventilation, but they are aware of the problems.

Ivan Sebesky, a workplace health and safety official, said the city must do the work.

"We have had dealings with them and they know they have to fix it and are moviig in that direction," he said.

Borland said transit has suceeded in reducing the levels by running the existing ventilation equipment at high capacity and telling drivers to warm up buses for shorter periods.

However, readings cloe to 1 1/4 times the provincial standard have been obtained recently.

Transit spent $220,000 a year ago to upgrade ventilation in another part of its Fort Rouge garage.

The work was carried out in a bus-servicing area after workers complained of nausea, severe headaches and burning eyes.

at the time, an Amalgamated Transit Union official said the union also was worried about possible links between nitrogen dioxide, lung disease and cancer.

Mark Purdy, chairman of the union's safety and health committee, said yesterday similar problems exist in the storage area of the Ft. Rouge garage and in two others.

The union has been aware of the problems for seven or eight years, he said.

"It's the same deal," Purdy said. "In the last couple of years we have been pushing and pushing and pushing and now we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel."

"Just in the last couple of years we have seen some progress made."

Purdy said the work carried out at the Fort Rouge servicing area, where buses are washed, checked and fuelled, appears to have solved the problem there.

Although the servicing area was the most serious problem, Borland said ventilating storage areas at the three garages will be much more costly because of their size.

"Combining all three storage areas, it's a huge area that we have to ventilate," he said. "You could put a few Woolco stores in there."

"Generally speaking, the only times we have the problem are twice a day when we have a lot of buses getting ready to go on the road."

As many as 100 buses at a time may be warming up in the Fort Rouge garage around 6 a.m. and 3 p.m., the transit director said.

Borland said the existing ventilation exhaust pipes were located at the bottoms of buses. The buses now exhaust upwards and the old systems are just not capable of removing the fumes.

He said transit plans to install new intake ducts for the exhaust fumes, increase the capacity of the ventilation fans and add air-exchange units to bring in fresh air.

The work should be completed by next winter if city council approves the project as part of its capital budget next month, he said.

Borland said the problem is not as critical in summer because doors to the storage sheds can be left open.