The Price Of Pollution
- Susan Berfield

​1

On most school days, nine-year-old Wong Ka Nang lines up with his classmates by a bus stop on a busy Hong Kong street. But on January 3 last year, Ka Nang didn't show up. The air was so unhealthy that the boy, who has asthma, had to miss the opening day of his school's winter term. For the first time since introducing a pollution index seven months earlier, officials advised those suffering from heart or respiratory problems to stay indoors.

​2

The main cause of foul air in Hong Kong is the motor vehicles. Hong Kong's Environmental Protection Department found that emission from diesel vehicles accounted for about 98 percent of the respirable suspended particulates in the air – one of Hong Kong's most damaging air pollutants. The worst offenders are taxis, mini-buses and trucks that run on diesel. What galled many in January 1996 was that just the month before the health alert, the transport lobby persuaded legislators to reject a government proposal that would require many commercial operators to replace their diesel-powered vehicles with ones that run on cleaner-burning petrol.

​3

Officials estimate that air quality in Hong Kong will continue to deteriorate. "The great pity," says Harry Dimitriou, a professor of transport and urban policy, "is that instead of providing a model for others, Hong Kong's leaders and planners have pretended that the environmental consequences of development are not very significant."

​4

Hong Kong is not the only city living in a fantasy world. Nearly every Asian capital, with the bright exceptions of Tokyo and Singapore, is choking on its own economic success. New Delhi already has the dubious distinction of being the world's fourth most polluted city. According to Dr. Ranjan Bose, Senior Researcher at New Delhi's Tata Energy Research Institute, by the year 2000 vehicular pollution in the capital will be about 20 percent higher than today if present trends continue.

​5

New Delhi's air is especially awful during winter. During much of the year, the warm air near the ground keeps rising, taking pollutants along with it. But in winter the air is cold and stays put. As a result the pollutants are trapped, resulting in choking smog that lingers for hours or even days.

​6

Regulations in the large urban centres, when they exist, are usually not enforced. That is why local standards, which are even lower than international norms, are hardly ever met. Acute respiratory diseases are already the most common forms of illness in urban areas. Many pollutants exist at sufficient levels to cause premature death or to be linked to cancer. The question that Asian cities have to face is: what price are people willing to pay for their wealth?

​7

In many Asian cities, such as Hong Kong, a principal cause of air pollution is vehicle emissions. Road transport accounts for 75 percent of the pollution in Beijing, 64 percent in Delhi and 52 percent in Mumbai. In 1994-95, the number of cars and jeeps in the Indian capital increased by about 20 percent over the previous year. This is double the Asian average.

​8

The biggest offenders in Indian cities are two- and three-wheelers which have highly polluting two-stroke engines. These engines burn fuel incompletely and release a lot of harmful hydrocarbons into the air. In New Delhi, two-wheelers make up 69 percent of the total traffic; in Calcutta, 44 percent. During the last decade, the number of two-wheelers on Indian roads has gone up five-and-a-half times.

​9

But the problem in Indian cities goes deeper than mere increase in the number of vehicles. "It is the result of a combination of bad vehicular technology, poor fuel quality, poor vehicle maintenance and non-existent traffic planning," says Anil Agrawal, Director of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in New Delhi. A recent CSE study has revealed the startling fact that the lead-free, "eco-friendly" petrol being sold in the country has high concentrations of benzene, a carcinogen far more toxic than lead.

​10

Interestingly, the solution to the problem of vehicular emission is not as difficult to find as it may appear. Even simple steps like proper engine maintenance, and regular engine tuning can reduce emission levels by around 20 percent. But for an almost pollution-free alternative, nothing can beat an efficient mass transport system such as electric trams or elevated trains. Even well-maintained buses emit about 90 times less pollutant than cars carrying the same number of people over the same distance.

​11

Construction and roadwork pollute the air too. Doctors in Bangkok found 18 species of pathogenic fungi and 20 types of bacteria in the city's dust in 1995. Until a few years ago, stone crushers were a major source of dust pollution in Delhi and although a court order closed them down, illegal crushing goes on. Dust levels rise as high as 500 micrograms per cubic metre of air. Around the three coal-burning power stations in New Delhi, it sometimes exceeds 10 times that value. No industry does as much damage to air quality as power plants that burn coal.

​12

Just as it ignores borders, air pollution doesn't discriminate between rich and poor, though children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable. Burning coal or diesel releases sulphur dioxide, which causes respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. It also emits pollutants such as hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, lead and other suspended particulate matter. Carbon monoxide poisons the blood while lead damages red blood cells, hurts the liver and kidneys and can cause neurological damage. Certain hydrocarbons are carcinogenic in high concentrations.

​13

People breathing dirty air also suffer more colds, allergies, even certain strains of flu. "There is no way to protect yourself," warns Dr. Chan Chang-Chuan, Taiwan's leading expert on air pollution-related health disorders. "Wearing a surgical mask is ineffective. Much of the pollution in the form of gases and particulates is so tiny that a simple mask has a low filtration rate. Besides, they are not airtight, so they give a false sense of security."

​14

A 1995 World Bank study indicates that almost four million people in New Delhi, more than three million in Calcutta two and a half million in Mumbai, need hospitalisation every year to recover from air-pollution related health problems.

15

Children also are more susceptible than adults to lead poisoning. A correlation exists between school children with high levels of lead in their blood and bone marrow and poor concentration skills and aggressive behaviour. Nevertheless, lead fuel is still widely used. In India the government has introduced lead-free petrol in a few selected cities, and in New Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai, new cars are not registered unless fitted with catalytic converters. But such token gestures have hardly made any difference.

​16

About 90 percent of the airborne lead in Indian metros comes from auto exhausts. So with the increasing number of vehicles on the roads, the lead level also increases. According to Dr (Ms) Iqbal Malik who runs a voluntary organization called Vatavaran (Hindi for environment) lead emission from vehicular exhausts in New Delhi has doubled in the last eight years. The capital's lead emission level is 50 percent higher than Mumbai's, and 65 percent higher than Calcutta's.

​17

The evidence that air pollution could one day outweigh the benefits of unchecked economic growth is considerable. If workers are ill more often, efficiency drops. But the real drag on growth is still to come for most cities. If you want to know what could lie ahead, some say, look at Bangkok. Although Thailand's GDP growth rate has hovered around eight percent for the past several years, economists estimate that it could have risen by 10 percent if Bangkok's traffic congestion and pollution were cleared up.

​18

The smoke signals from Asia's ailing cities are increasingly obvious, but many leaders and ordinary citizens are slow to act. For a relatively quick fix, governments can beef up the enforcement of existing regulations on emission levels and later bring them in line with more stringent international standards. They can also require assessments of the environmental cost of schemes that increase commercial and private traffic. A long-term regimen includes investing in more efficient and extensive mass transport systems and in alternative sources of clean energy; and commitment to far-sighted urban planning that would help create jobs and housing outside congested city centres.

​19

House builders and property developers, transport companies and car manufacturers generally are not willing to pay for cleaner air, either outright or in terms of lost business opportunities. In 1989, the Indian government proposed a ban on vehicles that were more than 20 years old, and then backed down when transporters and cabbies lobbied against it.

​20

In many cities the gap between laws and law enforcement is wide enough to drive a truck through. A Vatavaran study showed that a majority of government vehicles in Delhi did not conform to emission norms. Taiwan's standards for mobile sources of air pollution are said to match the toughest in the world. The problem, there as elsewhere in Asia, is limited enforcement or poor laws.

​21

Some people are fighting back. In Japan, residents have taken their complaints to court. Several have won. In one recent case, a court ordered the central government and the Hanshin Expressway Public Corporation to pay 65.5 million yen to a group of 18 people who lived near the busy highway. They argued that their high incidence of chronic bronchitis and asthma was caused by exposure to car emissions and factories near their homes.

​22

Are these signs of the times? Perhaps not elsewhere in the region — for now. But eventually, Indians and other Asians may find that it will be cheaper to reduce air pollution now rather than to pay for its nasty ill effects later.