Roadside pollution hits headlines

What CAN you do save lives and protect public health from harmful levels of air pollution? Send this to all your friends, so they can click here and sign the CAN petition.

The Clean Air Network, founded by the think tank Civic-Exchange, is a coalition of environmental NGOs, which aims to urge the HK Government to improve HK’s outdoor air quality to the point where pollution no longer poses a significant threat to human health.

Roadside pollution hits headlines

Over the past three days, the SCMP has published a spate of articles about the dire state of Hong Kong’s air pollution, with a particular focus on the alarming increase in roadside emissions. If you want to track levels every day and what it is doing to us, the Hedley Environmental Index gives you a minute-by-minute blow-by-blow on the health costs.

In an article published yesterday (“Breathless in the City” Friday July 17), Christine Loh, the Chairperson of CAN, makes it clear air pollution is Hong Kong’s biggest public health threat. Roadside pollution is at very high levels every day and affects millions of people in this city. She also points out that Hong Kong’s outdated Air Quality Objectives (AQOs) do not protect public health, and the daily API (Air Pollution Index) readings, based on the AQOs, don’t mean much.

Roadside pollution is so high because our vehicles are spewing large quantities of toxic pollution. Hong Kong has no one to blame besides itself for not having done more to clean-up. Hong Kong has been too permissive in allowing this level of pollution to persist.

Edward Yau, the environment minister, stated that in the soon-to-be-launched AQO review, “the public would be confronted with questions over what carrots or sticks should be used in tackling pollution and to what extent people were prepared to pay for the changes”. But public health should not be the subject of a cost-benefit analysis expressed in dollars. Rather, the public’s health should be the PRIMARY concern when devising air quality management policy. To make the point, one has to ask, would the government conduct such a cost-benefit analysis in the case of preventing, say, swine flu or SARS? Of course not! The government would simply go ahead and protect public health – automatically, as it should.

The government has promoted various useful initiatives, but as green groups say, they have not been nearly enough.  For example, the conversion from diesel-to-LPG for taxis and mini buses, and the introduction of ultra low sulphur diesel, were good decisions, but retrofitting pre-Euro trucks has clearly not been enough to curb roadside emissions. Tax concessions for cleaner vehicles cannot work fast enough, and the recent announcements to promote electric vehicles won’t make much difference for a long time to come. Fighting pollution from multiple sources require multiple actions and political determination.

The government must adopt a new policy goal to improve air quality to the point where pollution no longer poses a significant health risk. All bureaus and departments must work together on this.

Our air quality objectives must be revised using the WHO standards, and implementation plans with timelines must accompany interim targets.

Officials should devise a scheme to switch diesel and petrol vehicles to natural gas and environmentally sustainable biofuels while using electric-powered transport where appropriate.

Highways and transport officials must not be allowed to dictate – as they do today – road designs without considering environmental and health factors.

Traffic flows need to be managed more efficiently, using information technology, and the number of vehicles on our roads must be reduced.

Finally, vehicle tax and licence fees should be set according to the amount of emissions produced.

EPD plans to begin the next round of public consultation on the Air Quality Objectives by the end of July. Watch this space for updates . . .