Pollution policies should be left to competent authorities
SCMP
Anthony Hedley, school of public health, University of Hong Kong
Evidence is mounting worldwide of widespread injury to many body tissues and organs from air pollution. The brain is one victim, as pointed out by Walter de Havilland’s reference to German research (Traffic fumes and dementia, October 24).
The brain may be harmed directly or through damage to its blood vessels by air pollutants. These injuries will begin in the most sensitive younger members of the community and the resulting health effects may have a long latent period.
As a result, we are stoking up a huge potential legacy of illness and health care needs in successive generations of children which future governments, rather than the one now defaulting on air quality management, will have to contend with.
In the meantime, we are continually fed misinformation. The latest is the assertion by someone in the Environmental Protection Department (Smog likely to stay for another few days, October 26) that the roadside index is less relevant for most people because they spend only a short time each day at such locations. This is untrue, and worse, it amounts to sickening cynicism. Using government data and a separate study funded by the government, we can show conservatively that a large proportion of population time, more than 50 per cent to 60 per cent, is spent at more heavily polluted ground-level locations.
Roadside pollution and its health effects are known to extend through a wide radius from the sources and, in Hong Kong, will have an impact on schools, hospitals, transport, shop and office workers, plus roadside residents.
It takes about 20 minutes for roadside pollutants to induce abnormal changes in blood vessels.
If we want rational policies for air quality management then it is time that the licence to pontificate on environmental health matters be removed from the directorate of the EPD and placed firmly in the hands of informed health authorities.
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