Mary Ann Benitez – Updated on Jun 12, 2008 – SCMP
Hong Kong should quickly adopt World Health Organisation standards on air quality in light of its enormous impact on people’s health, a Civic Exchange study says.
Hospital bed-days, lost productivity and doctor visits associated with polluted air cost 1.8 billion yuan (HK$2.03 billion) a year in the Pearl River Delta, HK$1.1 billion in Hong Kong and HK$18 million in Macau, the study said.
Civic Exchange chief executive officer Christine Loh Kung-wai said: “One thing that the government does not do here is to link health and control of air pollution.
“You and I know that bad air pollution means it’s bad for our health, but what we are not able to do is to understand that in much greater depth,” she said. “By doing long-term health tracking and studies to track effectiveness of policies – that is the only real way to inform policymakers whether any of the initiatives that they roll out are having a beneficial impact on public health.”
She welcomed a review of the 20-year-old Air Quality Objectives that the government said would be completed by next year.
“The question is whether they will tighten [air quality standards] to WHO standards and then announce measures and a time frame … to reach them, or set looser standards,” she said.
Anthony Hedley, chair professor of the department of community medicine at the University of Hong Kong, said: “From the public health point of view, we regard the adoption of WHO guidelines an absolute imperative and priority.”
Ms Loh added: “The problem has been the government feels that if it’s a standard they set, they have to pass it. But they are forgetting that even other societies have not necessarily met the WHO guidelines, but they use it as a measure of public health risk and … therefore to come up with measures to reduce air pollution.”
Alexis Lau Kai-hon, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Science and Technology, said revising regional objectives in line with WHO guidelines “would provide powerful drivers to improve air quality and public health.”