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January 23rd, 2009:

Health Fears Mount As Smog Throws Pall Over City

(01-23 14:00) – The Standard

Thick smog enveloped Hong Kong again today, as scientists and campaigners said recent pollution reached levels 10 times above World Health Organization guidelines for clean air.

The Hedley Environmental Index, a website created by Hong Kong University professors and the Civic Exchange think-tank, said levels of breathable particles in some areas were 10 times recommended annual WHO levels.

Levels of nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide were five times WHO annual guidelines, the index found, making Thursday Hong Kong’s most polluted day in more than 12 months.

”This is smog, not fog,” said Alexis Lau, a professor at Hong Kong University for Science and Technology.

”The worst part is that most of these are fine particulates which are the most detrimental to our health.”

Health Concerns As Hong Kong Pollution Levels Rise

23rd Jan 2008 – AFP

HONG KONG (AFP) — Thick smog enveloped Hong Kong again on Friday, as scientists and campaigners said recent pollution had reached levels ten times above annual World Health Organisation guidelines for clean air.

The heavy haze descended on the city, blocking views across the financial hub’s famous Victoria Harbour and raising serious health concerns.

The Hedley Environmental Index, a website created by professors at Hong Kong University and think tank Civic Exchange, said levels of breathable particles in some areas were 10 times recommended annual WHO levels on Friday.

Levels of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide were five times WHO annual guidelines, the index found, making Thursday Hong Kong’s most polluted day in more than 12 months.

“This is smog, not fog,” said Alexis Lau, a professor at Hong Kong University for Science and Technology.

“The worst part is that most of these are fine particulates which are the most detrimental to our health.”

According to the government’s own air pollution index, levels in the heavily populated areas of Hong Kong were still “very high” on Friday, or well over 100 on the official scale.

When the government index is above 100, people with existing heart or respiratory problems are advised to stay indoors.

Hong Kong’s government is currently in the process of renewing its air quality guidelines, which are now more than 20 years old. Scientists say they are woefully out of date.

Pollution has in recent years become an increasing health and economic headache for the financial hub.

Emissions from the southern Chinese factory belt over Hong Kong’s northern border have combined with local emissions from power plants and transport to park a thick haze over the city for large parts of the year.

The Hedley Environmental Index, which combines air quality and public health data, puts the associated costs of the city’s poor air at 12.5 billion Hong Kong dollars (1.6 billion US) since the start of 2004.

It has, it said, [Hong Kong air pollution] caused more than 6,100 premature deaths.

The World’s “Brown Cloud”

New Study Gets Inside the World’s “Brown Cloud”

By Deena Guzder / Hong Kong – Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 – Time

Pilot John Horwood says the worse part about flying into Hong Kong is the suffocating, two-mile-thick blanket of pollution that hovers between 15 and 18,000 feet. “The whole cockpit fills with an acrid smell,” says Horwood, who started noticing the cloud in 1997. “Each year it just gets worse and worse.” What comprises this nuisance — a sprawling high-altitude mass of air pollution that stretches from the Arabian peninsula to the western Pacific Ocean — has long captured the curiosity of scientists. A report released in the Jan. 23 issue of Science breathes fresh air into that ongoing study, confirming that the mass, nicknamed the ‘Brown Cloud’ but comprised of several small, local clouds, is soot from human burning of wood, dung and crop residue, as well as industrial processes and traffic pollution.

Örjan Gustafsson, the study’s lead author, and his colleagues at Stockholm University conducted research with Indian scientists from January to April 2006 to determine that two-thirds of the cloud’s soot particles come from biomass combustion like household cooking and slash-and-burn agriculture. The researchers confirmed that the layer of haze — which many have blamed for the world’s increasingly extreme weather patterns — makes rain both more rare during the dry season and more intense during monsoons. And in South Asia, the cloud’s net effect on climate change, says the study, rivals that of carbon dioxide.

Scientists have been gathering different kinds of information about the mass for years. A 2008 study by the United Nations Environment Program, for instance, warned that 340,000 people in China and India alone die annually from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases that can be traced to human-induced emissions of combustible particles in these atmospheric brown clouds. It concluded that regional pollution’s impact can go global since winds blow soot across the world within weeks, and it, too, noted that brown clouds exacerbate deadly flooding and droughts.

But that report, like others before it, was inconclusive about what causes the clouds in the first place. “The new research is incredibly important because it refines our understanding of the clouds’ components,” says Achim Setiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program. “In each part of the world there are different atmospheric mixes that add to brown clouds’ cocktail, so this research helps show where governments should direct their money and efforts.”

The new findings imply that controlling biomass combustion, particularly the small-scale burning of wood and dung for home heating and cooking common throughout Asia and Africa, will be an important step towards improving the world’s air quality. Gustafsson, a professor of biogeochemistry at Stockholm University, urges environmentalists not to limit their efforts to curbing car traffic and coal-fired power plants. He says fighting poverty and spreading green technologies that limit emissions from small-scale biomass burning are equally important. “More households in South Asia need to be given the possibility to cook food and get heating without using open fires of wood and dung,” says Gustafsson. “The international community should step in and contribute to technology transfers towards solar heating and biogas, especially since the developed world is responsible for the climate situation that exists today.”

The silver lining of this massive brown cloud is that a boost in those technologies could decrease soot emissions — fast. “We can’t fix every environmental problem, but we can make a huge and immediate change by reducing black carbon,” says Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Director of the Center for Clouds, Chemistry & Climate at the University of California at San Diego. (Black carbon manifests as soot particles that comprise brown clouds.) While carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere respond on a sluggish 100-year timescale to reductions in emissions, soot particles, whose effects are equivalent to roughly half the warming damage that carbon dioxide does, have a shelf life of only a few weeks. Environmentalists have joined scientists’ call to urge governments to cut pollution by introducing more efficient heating stoves in developing countries and turning to solar power and other clean sources of energy. “We need sustainable growth in every city in this world,” says Edwin Lau Che Feng, director of the environmental group Friends of the Earth in Hong Kong. “Richer countries have a responsibility to transfer cleaner technology to developing nations and help them reduce emissions because developing nations are the world’s factory today.”

HK Pollution Levels 10 Times Clean Air Guidelines

23 Jan 2009, 1633 hrs IST, AFP – The Economic Times

HONG KONG: Thick smog enveloped Hong Kong again on Friday, as scientists and campaigners said recent pollution had reached levels ten times above annual World Health Organisation guidelines for clean air.

The heavy haze descended on the city, blocking views across the financial hub’s famous Victoria Harbour and raising serious health concerns.

The Hedley Environmental Index, a website created by professors at Hong Kong University and think tank Civic Exchange, said levels of breathable particles in some areas were 10 times recommended annual WHO levels on Friday.

Levels of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide were five times WHO annual guidelines, the index found, making Thursday Hong Kong’s most polluted day in more than 12 months.

“This is smog, not fog,” said Alexis Lau, a professor at Hong Kong University for Science and Technology.

“The worst part is that most of these are fine particulates which are the most detrimental to our health.”

According to the government’s own air pollution index, levels in the heavily populated areas of Hong Kong were still “very high” on Friday, or well over 100 on the official scale.

When the government index is above 100, people with existing heart or respiratory problems are advised to stay indoors.

Hong Kong’s government is currently in the process of renewing its air quality guidelines, which are now more than 20 years old. Scientists say they are woefully out of date.

Pollution has in recent years become an increasing health and economic headache for the financial hub.

Emissions from the southern Chinese factory belt over Hong Kong’s northern border have combined with local emissions from power plants and transport to park a thick haze over the city for large parts of the year.

The Hedley Environmental Index, which combines air quality and public health data, puts the associated costs of the city’s poor air at 12.5 billion Hong Kong dollars ($1.6bn) since the start of 2004.

It has, it said, caused more than 6,100 premature deaths.

Hong Kong Air Pollution ‘Very High’

Angela Seet – Updated on Jan 23, 2009 – SCMP

Air pollution levels in Hong Kong were very high on Friday, with the air pollution index (API) reaching 140 in Central, a spokesman from the Environmental Protection department said.

At 6pm, roadside station readings at Central and Causeway Bay were recorded as “very high” with an API rating of 118 and 103 respectively. The station reading at Mongkok was slightly better at 92, but according to the standards set by the department, it is still considered to be “high”.

The department found that the contributing pollutant to all three station readings was nitrogen dioxide, which causes urban haze, or “photochemical smog”.

Environmental Protection officer Dave Ho said says the air pollutants were not dispersed because of recent calm weather conditions.

“The air is currently affected by the continental airstream, with relatively high background pollution. Over the last two days, the wind was very weak so the pollutants were trapped and thus, pushing up the air pollution index,” he explained.

Mr Ho also said that air pollution levels should reduce in the next few days, if the winds pick up strength as usual.

Between API readings of 101 to 200, air pollution levels are rated “very high” and those with existing heart or respiratory illnesses are advised to avoid prolonged stay in areas with heavy traffic.

If you have to stay in streets or on roads with heavy traffic, do reduce physical exertion as far as possible,” a spokesman said.

Lawmakers are worried that the approaching 2010 targets for emissions reduction cannot be met as air pollution is not considered a serious threat.

Critics say that the city’s air quality objectives, set more than 20 years ago, are less stringent that the ones set by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

For example, if Hong Kong strictly followed the WHO target for sulfur content, the government would have to reduce current concentration levels by some 95 per cent.