August, 2012:

When the government announced on Thursday that the chief executive will break with tradition and deliver his first policy address in January instead of October, we trust Leung Chun-ying looked out of his window and reflected on the view from Government House – or what you could see of it. That would have helped explain why the report on the delay failed to make the front page of this newspaper, while one on the health-threatening level of air pollution that day did.

He has delayed the address to give the government more time to build a partnership with the new Legislative Council to be elected next month. Hopefully he will take the opportunity to raise with lawmakers the urgency of the city’s need for a meaningful, effective policy to clean up the air we breathe. He did, after all, list the environment among his government’s priorities if elected. There is reason for hope in reports that ChristineLoh Kung-wai, public policy think-tank chief and environmental advocate, is to join the government as undersecretary for the environment. Her own credibility will be at stake in the government’s performance on the environment.

Reports about extreme pollution events are familiar, but they never fail to shock. This time, experts repeated calls for a new alert system to warn the public about the health risks. Roadside readings in Central – of the air we actually breathe – hovered at or above 190 for 20 hours beginning on Wednesday, peaking at a record for the city of 212 with the exception of a sandstorm in 2010. Causeway Bay was almost as bad. That is off the dial of World Health Organisation guidelines. High readings continued yesterday. Medical authorities say more than 3,000 premature deaths a year can be attributed to air pollution.

It is no good officials continue to blame cross-border air pollution because the main culprit is roadside pollution, especially emissions from the thousands of old buses. It is no good them pointing to Hongkongers’ relatively long life expectancy, since this standard was established by people who did not breathe such filthy air. It is no good them pointing to the cost of getting cleaner air, since this ignores the cost to the community of pollution and we can easily afford it anyway. There is simply no excuse for the former government having delayed the introduction of new air quality objectives until 2014, or for adopting standards well below WHO guidelines, or for not having used its powers under existing legislation to introduce new standards sooner.

The chief executive has said action on urgent livelihood issues can be rolled out ahead of the policy address. On second thoughts, action on air pollution that puts the public interest ahead of sectional interests need not wait for the policy address either.

LAI SEE
Howard Winn
Aug 02, 2012

Good to see that the observatory issued a hot weather warning yesterday. This advised that, to prevent heat stroke, people should avoid prolonged activities outdoors. If you were outside, you should have been wearing a wide-brimmed hat and light-coloured, loose-fitting clothes and staying in shaded areas as much as possible. The observatory’s press statement urged television and radio to issue the warning as soon as possible. However, it is a shame there was no urgency attached to a far bigger threat – the air pollution levels.

The government’s air pollution index had all pollutants as “very high”. Given that these levels haven’t been adjusted since the 1980s, they are way out of date and way below the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines. The Environmental Protection Department’s advice for yesterday’s pollution levels was for children, the elderly and people with existing heart or respiratory illnesses to avoid prolonged stays in areas with heavy traffic and to reduce physical exertion in such areas as far as possible.

According to the department’s website, the respirable suspended particulates (RSP) at roadside level in Central between 8am and 6pm yesterday ranged between 23.9 and 171.7 micrograms per cubic metre (mcm). The WHO guidelines stipulate that, over a 24-hour period, a safe level is 50mcm. Above that level, the pollution begins to affect health.

The Hong Kong government’s 24-hour level is 180mcm. So levels of RSP were as much as three times higher than WHO guidelines, and more. Nitrogen dioxide levels were also high, ranging between 173 and 513mcm, more than twice the WHO guidelines of 200mcm per hour – and thus more than twice the levels at which NO₂ begins to affect one’s health. The Hedley Environmental index, which can be found athttp://hedleyindex.sph.hku.hk/home.php, was off the scale yesterday, with its pointer past the “very dangerous” level.

We also hear from Professor Anthony Hedley at the University of Hong Kong that the medical literature is now replete with studies on health impacts, especially in maternal and child health, with diverse and serious outcomes such as leukaemia, congenital heart disease and growth retardation in pregnancy at levels considerably lower than the current WHO annual limit. He has recently shown that compliance with the present short-term limits for NO₂ will not achieve the annual limit of 40mcm in a high-pollution environment like Hong Kong.

The air pollution we are discussing here is roadside pollution, which is created in Hong Kong and can be tackled by a government with political will. The main sources are buses and trucks with old diesel engines.

The government’s disregard for public health in this area is scandalous, particularly for a territory that likes to style itself as Asia’s world city. We await with some interest to see if the new Environment Bureau chief has any intention of doing something about this