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February, 2008:

Rich Countries Must Bear Cost Of Reducing Carbon Emissions

British foreign secretary: Rich Countries Must Bear Cost Of Reducing Carbon Emissions

The Associated Press – Published: February 26, 2008

SHANGHAI, China: Rich industrialized nations must help the developing world pay for a shift to cleaner technologies to fight climate change, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Tuesday during a visit to China’s financial center.

Major developing nations such as China and India will face a devastating “boomerang effect” of devastating effects from global warming such as drought and crop disruptions if they do not opt for cleaner, less polluting economic development, Miliband told students at the China-Europe International Business School.

Adapting energy technologies that emit fewer of the greenhouse gases viewed as a main contributor to climate change “does not sacrifice development but … it is much more expensive than high-carbon development,” he said.

“The question is, who pays for it?” Miliband said. “The richer countries have got to lead in taking the burden of paying for the shift to a lower-carbon economy.”

Scientists believe carbon dioxide is one of the leading contributors to global warming.

China, which chiefly relies on heavily polluting coal to fuel its surging economy, now rivals the United States as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Britain backs calls for industrialized countries to help the developing world cope with the consequences of centuries of pollution by the West.

Last month, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged about 50 million pounds (US$98.3 million; €66.3 million) to support investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy, clean coal and carbon dioxide capture-and-storage technology during his first state visit to China.

China has pledged to improve energy efficiency, while insisting on its right to pursue the economic growth needed to supply jobs to its 1.3 billion people.

For the poorest countries, the focus should be on promoting sustainable development, Miliband said.

“Their aid programs have got to be ‘greened,'” he said.

Miliband was to travel to the southwestern industrial hub of Chongqing before heading to Beijing later in the week.

During a stopover in Hong Kong, he said Monday that he would discuss the issue of Sudan with his Chinese counterparts, but added that Beijing alone should not be held responsible for trying to end the conflict there.

“We all have our responsibility to use our weight in the country and in the international arena to argue for dialogue, for responsibilities on both sides.”

Kuwait-China $5b Refinery Under Serious Evaluation

Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) – 26/02/2008

(MENAFN – Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) The petrochemical project of the state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC) and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp’s (Sinopec) in southern China, worth USD five billion, is still under serious evaluation by environmental authorities, official media reported in Beijing Tuesday.

“The massive petrochemical base planned for construction in Guangzhou’s Nansha district will be less polluting than people believe and is still under the State’s environmental assessment,” Liu Jianwei, deputy director of the Nansha district government, was quoted by the China Daily as saying.
Liu did not disclose when the project was scheduled to commence building, according to the daily.

The Sinopec-Kuwait oil refinery and chemical project, with a planned investment of USD five billion, will be the largest joint venture in China.
Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI), the international refining and market arm of KPC, has formed the joint venture with China’s biggest oil refiner Sinopec Corp. to construct the integrated complex.

The refinery will be designed to process 100 percent Kuwaiti crude supplied by KPC, with a capacity of 13 million tons per year, or 260,000 barrels per day (bpd), while the ethylene cracker unit is slated to have an annual production capacity of one million tons. The KPI-led consortium also includes Kuwait Petrochemicals Company (PIC) and foreign partners such as Dow Chemical Co. of the US.

“The plant in the provincial capital of Guangdong will recycle all its raw materials, adhere to the most stringent global environmental standards and employ state-of-the-art technologies,” he said.

Liu was responding to a proposal jointly submitted recently by 14 legislators to the Guangdong provincial people’s congress. Legislators submitted a proposal for the Nansha petrochemical project, which approved by the central government in December, to be delayed.

“The project should not have been listed as one of this year’s key projects of Guangzhou and Guangdong as the central government had not yet completed an environmental evaluation on the base,” they said.

Liu Yiling, director of the Guangdong environmental protection technological center, said the project violates the environmental protection guideline, which designates Nansha as an area not suitable for large oil refinery, iron and steel projects.

“The Nansha plant would worsen air pollution problems in Guangzhou, she said, stressing that it will have adverse impact on the air quality of cities including Hong Kong and Shenzhen.

Traffic Pollution Lowers Kids’ IQs

Ned Lydon – Updated on Feb 25, 2008 – SCMP

Traffic Pollution Lowers Kids’ IQs

Children who live in neighbourhoods exposed to heavy traffic have lower IQs and poorer memories than children from cleaner areas, say Harvard School of Public Health researchers who studied more than 200 children in Boston aged eight to 11. The greater their exposure to so-called black carbon, a component of traffic exhaust, the lower their scores on several intelligence tests, Reuters reports. The effect was similar to that seen in children whose mothers smoked 10 cigarettes a day while pregnant, says team leader Shakira Franco Suglia. The researchers say traffic pollution may cause inflammation and affect the supply of oxygen to the brain.

Proud To Be A Prius

William Wadsworth – Updated on Feb 23, 2008 – SCMP

Proud To Be A Prius

Bravo to Toyota dealers Crown Motors for supplying three hybrid Priuses for last Sunday’s Hong Kong Marathon. The hybrid drives were “smooth and successful”, says the dealer’s spokesman, Keith Cheng.

“Our Prius needed to stay about 50 metres ahead of the runners,” he says. “The fastest runner can finish the 10km [event] in 30 minutes, so the average speed of the lead car was approximately 20-30km/h, depending on the road conditions.”

Marathon drives require lots of concentration, he says, particularly when full marathon and half marathon runners converged at the Western Harbour Tunnel approach to Hong Kong Island, he says. “The clock cars also experienced a few tough corners in the narrow roads in Causeway Bay, the busiest district on Hong Kong Island.”

The hybrid earned some thumbs-up on the run. The hybrid has gained “wide public acceptance as the official clock car for opening up a world of fresher air to all marathon runners”, Cheng says.

The clock job’s a timely coup for Toyota. The Prius celebrated its 10th anniversary in December and “around 900,000” models have been sold, Toyota says. “The launch of an all-new Prius in 2004 also accelerated sales to the extent that Toyota commissioned a new plant in Changchun, on the mainland, to cope with demand.”

The Prius is also selling well in Hong Kong, with 1,060 on the road by February 1, says Cheng. Emitting just 104 grams of CO2 per kilometre with a claimed combined-cycle fuel consumption figure of 4.3 litres per 100km, the 1.5-litre, hybrid (from HK$223,950) seems to attract locals with a higher income, in managerial jobs and married with children, Cheng says. A Prius owner “also tends to have a higher education background and a sense of environmental protection and fuel efficiency”, he says.

Quite so. A Prius is an admirable boast at cocktail parties, and it has a five-star New Car Assessment Programme safety rating too. So who drives one here? “It’s not our practice to disclose any information of our customers, but Chinese newspapers have reported that actor Daniel Wu [Yin-cho] and Sarah Liao Sau-tung, former environment, transport and works secretary, are driving Priuses,” Cheng says.

Right on. We won’t forget how Liao bought a first-generation Prius way back in 2002.

We also asked Crown Motors if there’s a Prius or hybrid club. After all, Prius whirrers love to discuss their regenerative braking and say how long they’ve run on electric. Not at the moment, Cheng says, “but we would be glad to see one in Hong Kong, and Crown Motors would provide support to a fan club.”

We also suggest a round-the-island charity hybrid car drive, say for Operation Santa Claus, and to show how Green motoring is catching on here. After all, Crown Motors has sold 362 RX400h sports utility vehicles (HK$580,240) and 107 LS600hL limousines (from HK$1,554,000) here. And parallel importers Richburg Motors have sold 125 hybrids, 93 of them Alphards, since 1993. Both dealers are amenable to the idea, but are you? Tell us on cars@scmp.com

Newcomers at Mazda

Mazda Hong Kong will present three new cars at its Mazda Show in the Atrium at Ocean Terminal this weekend, says dealership spokesman, Kari Chim. From noon today you’ll see the Mazda6 we featured earlier, the 2008 Mazda8, which comes in four variants and costs HK$229,500 after the 30 per cent first registration tax reduction for being an environmentally friendly vehicle, and the new-look Mazda5 seven-seater (pictured, HK$159,990 for the Select; HK$179,990 for the Deluxe).

cars@scmp.com

Bad Air Blamed For Difficulty Attracting Academics

Bad Air, Weak Dollar Blamed For Difficulty Attracting Academics

Will Clem – SCMP
Feb 22, 2008

Pollution and a weak Hong Kong dollar due to the peg to the US currency are making it difficult for local universities to attract British and European academics, Chinese University’s vice-chancellor said yesterday. Speaking at a spring media reception, Lawrence Lau Juen-yee said the exchange rate had weakened Hong Kong’s purchasing power on the careers market when all eight publicly funded tertiary institutions were recruiting in preparation for the switch to a four-year degree in 2012.

“If we want to hire someone from Britain, then it is a lot harder now than it was five years ago,” Professor Lau said.

“The US dollar is falling and we are stuck to it. It seems there is no benefit to us in that.”

In February 2003, the British pound was worth about HK$12.30 compared with its current rate of HK$15.17.

“These academics will not be planning to spend the rest of their lives in Hong Kong,” Professor Lau said. “They often have a mortgage in Britain they will need to pay for, and will be thinking about planning for their retirement.”

However, he said pay was not the only concern.

“Things like pollution also have an effect,” he said. “A lot of candidates ask us about the air quality here.”

Professor Lau also added his weight to University of Hong Kong vice-chancellor Tsui Lap-chee’s call last week for the government to establish an endowment fund to provide more research funding.

Professor Tsui had said the lack of research opportunities made the city less attractive to top international academics.

Chinese University needs to hire about 400 lecturers and professors over the next four years to keep up with general staff turnover and to meet the teaching requirements for the new degree structure, which will see its undergraduate population increase by a third.

Winter Debris Exposes China’s Woes

Asia Times – By Kent Ewing

HONG KONG – Now that China’s worst winter in 50 years has eased, officials are breathing easier as millions of migrant workers return to their jobs following riotous scenes at rail and bus stations during the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday.

Traditionally, this is one time of year when workers can go home to visit their families in often distant provinces, yet severe storms crippled large segments of the nation’s transport system, making it impossible for many to travel. For those lucky enough to find a seat on a train or bus, the annual pilgrimage home turned into a grueling epic of breakdowns and delays.

A month of snow and ice storms, beginning January 10, left 107 people dead, killed 69 million head of livestock and destroyed 354,000 homes and nearly 62 million acres of farmland, according to state media. Widespread damage was caused to China’s fisheries, with an estimated 2,300 acres of aquaculture affected across 13 provinces.

The effect will be to further drive up already rising food prices, likely pushing inflation even above last month’s 11-year-high of 7.1%. In total, the severe weather caused 111.1 billion yuan (US$15.5 billion) in direct economic losses to the country.

Blame the weather, right? That’s what Chinese meteorologists, no doubt prompted by officialdom, would like the world to believe. According to them, the weather phenomenon known as La Nina is the chief culprit in this winter’s disaster. La Nina creates unusually low temperatures across the eastern and central Pacific Ocean, bringing extreme weather. Indeed, this winter has been uncommonly bad, and there is nothing the Chinese leadership could have done to prevent that.

The government response to the weather emergency, however – from President Hu Jintao to Premier Wen Jiabao at the top all the way down to local officials in the 19 provinces affected by the storms – proved woefully inadequate, revealing critical weaknesses in China’s ability to deal with future crises.

Just as the country is burnishing its image in preparation to host this summer’s Olympic Games, the prolonged bout of nasty weather served to point out that the nation still has a long way to go when facing pressing problems that require a coordinated national response. In hindsight, it is clear the severity of the storms could have been anticipated by weather forecasters and the disastrous effects considerably mitigated by a better disaster management plan – which in this case seemed to consist mostly of handing snow shovels to legions of People’s Liberation Army soldiers.

Moreover, the national infrastructure failed a big test, and the wanton environmental degradation that has accompanied China’s breakneck growth over the last 30 years no doubt contributed to the weather catastrophe.

The storms also served to point up flaws in economic policy as the central government’s system of price controls on electricity led power companies to cut their fuel stockpiles, creating an energy crunch in a time of extreme need. In many ways, then, the severe winter weather amounted to a perfect storm for revealing how far China still has to go to join the first tier of nations.

Consider the continuing consequences of the storms. Power supplies in parts of the eastern province of Zhejiang and in southern Guangdong, a key industrial area, will not be restored until next month. In Zhejiang, more than 600 villages still have no electricity.

Food prices continue to rise because of crop damage and transport hitches, and the nation’s coal supply is dangerously low because of a price-control system that discourages production. But there is good news – spring is coming, along with its warmer weather, and all of these concerns can then recede into the background as Olympic hysteria builds.

The lessons of this winter’s disaster, however, should not be ignored – similar catastrophes are likely to occur again. One encouraging development was the openness and speed with which Beijing provided information on the economic costs of the storms. Unlike in so many other situations – coal-mining disasters, bird flu outbreaks, the SARS epidemic – there has been no cover-up this time. Officials have been frank, straightforward and expeditious in reporting the bad news.

That said, however, the government was ill-prepared from top to bottom for such a disaster. That lack of preparation greatly exacerbated the damage wrought by the severe weather. By this time next year, let’s hope that the central government has a legitimate disaster management plan in place that goes far beyond handing out shovels and dispatching Wen, the so-called “people’s premier”, to particularly hard-hit areas with messages of cold comfort and empty encouragement.

In the end, the central government committed 2.7 billion yuan (US$376 million) to disaster relief, but the lack of any effective disaster management plan was a glaring omission in central-government planning.

Another obvious area for improvement is meteorology. The storms were a natural, forecastable phenomenon, but Chinese weather forecasters clearly were looking out the wrong windows. In consequence, a series of other calamities kicked in. Key roads and rail lines were blocked, without any coordinated plan to clear them. As a result, tens of millions of migrant workers were stranded or painfully delayed in their quest to return home for the new year. The roads and railways on which they will journey again next year are in dire need of an upgrade.

The policy of price controls on electricity also needs a rethink because it discouraged power companies from keeping adequate stockpiles of fuel for emergencies such as the one China has just passed through.

Finally, there is no question that the environmental degradation caused by China’s meteoric economic rise has contributed to extreme weather in the country. This winter of devastation and discontent should also serve as a painful reminder that it is past time to balance economic growth with environmental protection. And, of course, the choking pollution likely to greet Olympic athletes in Beijing this summer will be yet another reminder.

Kent Ewing is a teacher and writer at Hong Kong International School. He can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.

Public Encouraged To Tackle Pollution

By SHAILESH PALEKAR – UPI Correspondent – Published: February 20, 2008

HONG KONG, China, Encouraging public participation to tackle pollution is an important feature in new environmental legislation introduced by the Chinese government, a report released today in Hong Kong, by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs and World Wide Fund, has said.

The report titled “China Greening: the emerging role of the Public” in collaboration with CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, a Hong Kong based regional investment house states that China’s greatest asset at present, to counter growing levels of pollution, is an increasingly vigilant public. The report says that the public now enjoy more support from the government with the implementation of several recent laws to counter environmental hazards.

The massive scale of environmental degradation costing the government in excess of US$100 billion annually has prompted the government to encourage public participation in tackling the issue as it finds its own resources limited and inadequate. “In the face of complicated and arduous environmental-protection work, it is impossible to rely on environmental authorities alone. The only way to break the deadlock is to enlist the power to the public,” Pan Yue, Deputy Minister of the State Environmental Protection Agency said.

Increasing economic development in China in the form of manufacturing units and production facilities has created a series of environmental problems due to non-compliance of set standards. This has strained relationships between local communities and polluting entities, which in some instances have lead to violent confrontations. According to government statistics, the number of complaints made to environmental authorities has increased 30 percent annually since 2002 while the number of collective incidents triggered by environmental damage has increased by an average of 29 percent per year.

“There is a growing consensus that we need to strike a balance between economic development and environmental protection,” says Ma Jun, Director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. “And the Chinese government has responded with new laws and policies that encourage greater disclosure and public participation in environmental governance.”

According to the report, while the government has improved public access to environmental data, greater transparency of corporate violations has led to increased public scrutiny on corporate behavior.

“Public disclosure of polluting enterprises will prove to be a key motivator for companies to do business in a more responsible fashion,” says Liam Slater, Head of the Climate Program at WWF in Hong Kong.

The government’s strategy of involving the public to police environmental issues has also encouraged NGO’s like the IPE to expose environmental violators to public scrutiny and intervention. IPE’s web-based China water pollution map, sourced from government and other publicly available data has demanded accountability from multinational companies such as Pepsi, Bridgestone, Nissin, Veolia and Samsung amongst others, for violating environmental standards.

Local NGO’s are also tapping consumer purchasing power to pressure polluters to change their ways. The “Green Choice Initiative” launched by 21 environmental groups in China, in 2007, encourage consumers to carefully consider companies’ environmental performance when making daily retail purchases and other buying decisions. Since the launch of the GCI, some 50 companies in violation of water quality standards have reportedly approached environmental groups to resolve the identified environmental concerns.

Greater awareness and shifting attitudes of consumers towards environmental compliance by companies is likely to have strong repercussions for both corporate entities and investors. For example, it could extend the construction time of projects that could affect earnings and investors would have to wait longer for their returns on investments.

A vigilant public is widely seen as policing greater responsible corporate behavior and Slater believes that, “in some ways, the level of transparency and public participation is a driving or limiting factor in the evolution of and enforcement of environmental regulation.”

Beyond all the talk of greater public participation, the main concern however, remains of how the government would implement and enforce its ambitious goals of tackling the pollution and environment issues. “When we look at its (the government’s) Eleventh 5 year plan and some of the targets in there, we see that in the initial years, those targets were not been hit. And, while we have seen another level of policy response from Beijing to drive the message even harder, we are still not convinced that the energy intensity targets, or the pollution targets or the renewable targets will be achieved by 2010.”

While skepticism prevails on implementation, Slater pins the premise of the report on hope. “We see a trend toward greater levels of public participation and greater levels of transparency and we see support for that trend from the government.”

While in principle, the Chinese government should play a bigger and stronger role in tackling environmental issues, in reality it is not able to address such a complex issue within a short time frame, believes Y.K Park, a researcher at the Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia. “In terms of the importance of government agendas, growth and competitiveness of the country is their main agenda,” she says. “However the government is understanding the pollution issues and all we can do is to put pressure for better disclosure and regulations. It is a first step and a good start.”

China is the world’s fourth largest economy today and dubbed as the “world’s factory” for consumer goods. So while it revels in its economic growth and financial fortunes, it remains to be seen how fast the emerging role of the public will tackle the problems of environmental damage and protection.

China Factories Move Inland To Avoid Green Scrutiny

Wed Feb 20, 2008 2:31pm GMT

HONG KONG (Reuters) – New “green laws” and growing public intolerance for polluters are driving dirty Chinese factories inland from coastal regions to escape higher costs and tighter scrutiny, a think-tank said on Wednesday.

The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), a pioneering environmental campaign group in China, said while tougher anti-pollution laws and a more vigilant public might force greener investing in China, some of the country’s worst polluters were opting to relocate inland rather than clean up.

“It’s quite prevalent, especially in the Pearl River Delta where the government is trying to clear the mess and strengthen the enforcement,” said Ma Jun, the think tank’s director.

In certain counties “there are very, very loose environmental rules. They create local policies and rules saying that they’ll only check companies once a year … and ensure these companies will not be disturbed,” Ma added.

The trend comes at a time of surging costs in China’s major manufacturing hubs, including Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta and other coastal regions, which have forced thousands of factories to close and relocate to lower-cost centers, such as Vietnam.

While cheap labor made China the world’s manufacturing base, stricter pollution control measures are among a basket of factors adding to the cost of manufacturing there, including rising wages and a strengthening yuan and cuts in export tax rebates.

China has struggled to control chronic air and water pollution, a consequence of decades of unchecked economic growth, not only to curb degradation but also because pollution has become a trigger for social unrest.

Despite the trend of polluting factories moving inland to provinces such as Hunan, Guangxi, Zhejiang and Jiangxi, there have been examples of authorities hitting back.

Hundreds of chemical plants were forced to close around China’s giant Taihu lake, after authorities raised pollution charges last year, following an outbreak of putrid green-algae that left tap water undrinkable for millions.

IPE now lists about 15,000 companies that have broken emissions standards across China, including multinationals such as Pepsi, LG and Samsung — a tiny proportion of which have later improved waste treatment measures as verified by third-party audits.

A new IPE report, written in collaboration with investment bank CLSA and green group WWF, found Chinese public and media pressure was playing a crucial role in filling a void in official enforcement, with complaints made to environmental authorities increasing 30 percent annually and hitting 600,000 cases in 2004.

(Reporting by James Pomfret; Editing by David Fogarty)

Hong Kong Marathon

Best feet forward right to the very end

Timothy Chui – Monday, February 18, 2008

A crisp winter’s morning set the stage for yesterday’s Standard Chartered Marathon in which a Japanese ended four years of domination by Kenyans.

In his first attempt at the Hong Kong marathon, Koichiro Fukuoka, 29, from Nagasaki completed the 42-kilometer race in two hours, 18 minutes and 10 seconds.

The women’s section was won by Kim Kum Ok, 20, of North Korea in two hours, 36 minutes and 43 seconds. She crossed the finishing line hand-in- hand with compatriot Jong Yong Ok, 27, who was ruled second by a judge.

Local contestants dominated the half-marathon and 10-kilometer races. Chan Ka-ho, a 23-year-old sports science student, took the men’s half marathon title in one hour, 12 minutes, breaking his own Hong Kong residents’ record set in 2006 by two seconds.

Toh So-liang won the women’s race in one hour, 27 minutes and 39 seconds.

Physical education teacher Tse Hok- ham, 25, grabbed the honors in the men’s 10km race with a winning time of 33 minutes, 42 seconds.

Clerk Leung Ying-suet, 27, was first among the women, clocking in at 38 minutes and one second.

Runners welcomed the shift of the 10km run to the Island Eastern Corridor, with many saying the flatter and straighter route had improved running times.

“I’ve been running the marathon for a decade now and it always feels like there isn’t any air down there [Western Tunnel],” said Tse.

The decision to have all three races finish in Victoria Park not only excited a normally quiet Sunday shopping crowd, but the throngs of well-wishers and onlookers also had an effect on the runners.

“I was neck and neck with a man from Japan in the last two kilometers and I was ready to give up. Then I saw the crowd shouting and cheering me on,” said Chan.

” It gave me the drive to push through and finish hard.”

Hong Kong Amateur Athletics Association chairman William Ko Wai- lam said that, out of 49,686 registered runners, 42,577 took part compared with about 38,000 last year.

The completion rate for the 10km race was 98.5 percent, and 99.7 percent for the half-marathon.

Ko said these high proportions of runners finishing the race reflected the success of the event, adding that he hoped this year’s traffic arrangements could be kept for next year’s event.

The temperature – 13 degrees Celsius – was also a welcome change for the runners, with many favoring the switch to February after the muggy March weather of the 2006 and 2007 marathons.

Ko said 15 runners were hospitalized, but none was reported to be in serious condition.

Last year, more than 6,000 runners were sent to hospital for various ailments, mostly muscle cramp and exhaustion.

Veteran UK marathon runner Charlotte Cutler, 35 – a political consultant who came second in the women’s 10km event – said the pace of the race lagged behind that of the London marathon, adding that yesterday’s air quality had triggered her sinus problems.

The Environmental Protection Department’s air pollution indexes were high at all general and roadside stations, with Causeway Bay and Central topping the list at 97 and 82, respectively.

Breathing Dirty Air May Lower Kids’ IQ

Sat Feb 16, 2008 1:22am IST – By Anne Harding – Reuters India
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Kids who live in neighborhoods with heavy traffic pollution have lower IQs and score worse on other tests of intelligence and memory than children who breathe cleaner air, a new study shows.

The effect of pollution on intelligence was similar to that seen in children whose mothers smoked 10 cigarettes a day while pregnant, or in kids who have been exposed to lead, Dr. Shakira Franco Suglia of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health.

While the effect of pollution on cardiovascular and respiratory health has been studied extensively, less is known about how breathing dirty air might affect the brain, Suglia and her team write in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

To investigate, she and her colleagues looked at 202 Boston children 8 to 11 years old who were participating in a study of maternal smoking. The researchers related several measures of cognitive function to the children’s estimated exposure to black carbon, a component of the particulate matter emitted in automobile and truck exhaust, particularly by diesel vehicles.

The more heavily exposed children were to black carbon, the lower were their scores on several intelligence tests.

When the researchers adjusted for the effects of parents’ education, language spoken at home, birth weight, and exposure to tobacco smoke, the association remained.

For example, heavy exposure to black carbon was linked to a 3.4-point drop in IQ, on average. Heavily exposed children also scored lower on tests of vocabulary, memory and learning.

“It’s within the range for in utero tobacco exposure and lead exposure,” Suglia said in an interview.

She pointed out that exposure to traffic pollution has been associated with a number of other harmful effects and that, short of moving away from heavy traffic areas, there’s not much people can do to limit it.

She and her colleagues suggest that traffic pollution may exert harmful effects by causing inflammation and oxidative damage to the brain. They call for further research on the effects of pollution on the development of intelligence in children and on cognitive decline for people of all ages, including whether traffic exposure might cause or accelerate brain degeneration in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, February 1, 2008.