Beijing bans higher emission vehicles to control air pollution 

Posted on February 14, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Light-duty gasoline-powered cars that fail to meet the National Emission Standard III will be banned from entering Beijing’s fifth ring on weekdays.

Beijing has banned high-emission vehicles in a bid to control recurring air-pollution enveloping the city with a population of 21.7 million people.

Starting from tomorrow, light-duty gasoline-powered cars that fail to meet the National Emission Standard III will be banned from entering Beijing’s fifth ring on weekdays.

Substandard cars will also be taken off the road through annual inspections or spot checks.

The Chinese capital currently requires new cars to comply with the “Beijing VI” emission standard, which is higher than the widely-used National Emission Standard V and equivalent to the Euro VI standard, the strictest in China.

“After weeding out yellow-labelled cars (outdated and heavy-polluting vehicles), vehicles consistent with the National Emission Standards II and III release most of the pollutants on the roads,” state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Yu Jianhua, chief engineer of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.

Higher-polluting gasoline vehicles account for less than 10 per cent of vehicles on the road, but discharge over 30 per cent of nitrogen oxide and 25 per cent of volatile organic compounds, Yu said.

Beijing’s 5.7 million vehicles produce 500,000 tonnes of various pollutants annually and account for 31 percent of locally-generated PM 2.5, a particulate matter associated with hazardous smog, making it the prime source of PM 2.5, according to the environmental authority.

Plagued by smog over the past decade, the capital city has initiated a series of regulations to improve its air quality but the pollution persisted sparking public criticism.

It has moved out high-polluting industries, pulled outdated cars off the road, continued to improve the public transportation system and rolled out policies to support new energy vehicles.

Average density of PM 2.5 in the capital was 73 micrograms per cubic meter in 2016, down 9.9 per cent from the previous year, the Beijing Municipal Reform and Development Commission said.

A new round of air pollution hit Beijing and 20 other cities in eastern China due to unfavourable weather conditions.

Apart from the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which is expected to see heavy pollution till tomorrow, air quality in more than 20 cities in provinces such as Shandong and Henan is forecast to deteriorate due to unfavourable weather conditions.

A cold front is expected to help disperse the pollution on February 16.

The pollution returns to these cities after a fortnight holiday during which most of the factories have been shutdown now resumed production affecting the air quality.

Source: Beijing bans higher emission vehicles to control air pollution – The Economic Times

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Improvements in short-term forecasting of air pollution levels 

Posted on February 14, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

The research project carried out by a researcher at UPM has successfully predicted the daily maximum ozone threshold exceedances in the Hong Kong area. The results show that an accurate and prompt prediction of tropospheric ozone concentrations is of great importance to the management of the public pollution warning system.

In recent years the air pollution has caught the public attention since it can cause health problems. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the European Union and other countries have established different thresholds for both warning and risk to vegetation or human health taking into account the pollutant and the context.

The goal of governments is to guarantee that these thresholds do not exceed the limits, but when this occurs, the prediction of the evolution of values in the following hours becomes an essential element, at least for the corrective measures.

The problem arises because computational models have severe limitations in terms of accuracy as they are sensitive to the boundary conditions at certain points thus uncertainty grows rapidly. Besides, the techniques based on regression models often undervalue the pollutant peaks since they tend to minimize the errors made in the dataset. Precisely these peak values are indeed the most interesting to predict since their values will usually mark the measures to be adopted in each case.

In order to face this difficulty of predicting the highest values, a researcher from Projects & Quality group from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid has developed a methodology that combines the pre-processing of the datasets to learn the behavior of physical phenomena with regression and artificial intelligence techniques, using a voting technique among different models to improve predictive capacity. Bing Gong, the main author of the study says “the obtained data have good properties of sensitivity and stability and the results improve the traditional techniques between 30% and 80%.”

This study was carried out in Hong Kong, however other members of the research group are conducting similar projects in other cities such as Marrakech or Mexico.

In addition, the team of researchers is currently working on the estimation of human exposure to pollutants, based on the immission values and the geographical location of the person. Joaquín Ordieres, the leader of the research group, says “we aim to add additional elements such as the consideration of the quality of home or office air.” It is understood the adding of these elements is the next logical step in order to provide people and health systems with more conclusive evidences of exposure than the registered generic immission values.”

Source: Improvements in short-term forecasting of air pollution levels — ScienceDaily

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Public transport users exposed to more pollutants

Posted on February 14, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Commuters who use public transport are exposed to up to eight times the level of pollutants as motorists, a study has found.

Researchers discovered that passengers are exposed to cancer-causing particulates, which come from dust in the air and vehicle fumes, when windows are kept open on buses and trains for ventilation. Those in cars are insulated from this by closed windows and air conditioning systems.

The report, by scientists at the University of Surrey, found those who travelled on the London Underground experienced the worst quality air levels. This is because trains on deep lines kick up harmful dust, which becomes concentrated in the air, and use open windows for ventilation.

After the Tube the next highest level of exposure to pollutants came on buses, due to the length of journey and similar reliance on open windows for ventilation.

While those who drove diesel cars into work were typically exposed to the least pollution, the study found that per person they added six times the amount of particulate matter to the environment compared with those who take the bus.

The study also found that because those from areas of greater affluence were more likely to have access to a car, they would in turn experience less pollution to those living in more deprived areas who relied predominantly on the bus or other forms of public transport to get to work.

Poor air quality is estimated to cost Britain’s economy £3.7billion a year, and contributes to 9,400 deaths annually in London alone.

Academics assessed air pollution levels on typical commuting routes, checking hundreds of journeys by commuters using buses, cars and Tube.

Because bus journeys were 17-42 minutes longer than car journeys, it meant that bus passengers were exposed to higher levels of pollution for longer periods of time.

As such, the levels of PM that commuters using the bus were exposed to were up to five times higher than those who travelled in the car.

Dr Prashant Kumar, of the University of Surrey, who led the study, said: ‘There is an interesting trade-off of pollution exposure between different modes of transport.

‘For example, commuters travelling to work on Underground trains are exposed to the highest levels of large-sized particles while being exposed to the highest level of black carbon and ultrafine particles during commute in buses.

‘The relatively new airtight trains with closed windows showed a significant difference to the levels of particles people are exposed to over time, suggesting that operators should consider this aspect during any upgrade of Underground trains, along with the ways to improve ventilation in underground tunnels.’

‘We found that there is definitely an element of environmental injustice among those commuting in London, with those who create the most pollution having the least exposure to it.’

Typically, those who travelled into work by car left their windows up and so the driving cabin was sealed from outside pollutants. Those who used the bus, while exposed to pollutants through the open windows, also experienced the pollution at each bus stop when doors opened to allow passengers off.

The study comes as Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, is to introduce a £10 daily charge on any pre-2005 diesel car driving in central London, while encouraging diesel drivers to buy cleaner alternatives with calls for a national scrappage scheme.

Source: Public transport users exposed to more pollutants | Daily Mail Online

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Tipping point: revealing the cities where exercise does more harm than good 

Posted on February 13, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

In at least 15 cities, air pollution has now become so bad that the danger to health of just 30 minutes of cycling outweighs the benefits of exercise altogether, according to new research

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Who says exercise is always good for you? Cycling to work in certain highly polluted cities could be more dangerous to your health than not doing it at all, according to researchers.

In cities such as Allahabad in India, or Zabol in Iran, the long-term damage from inhaling fine particulates could outweigh the usual health gains of cycling after just 30 minutes. In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this tipping point happens after just 45 minutes a day cycling along busy roads. In Delhi or the Chinese city of Xingtai, meanwhile, residents pass what the researchers call the “breakeven point” after an hour. Other exercise with the same intensity as cycling – such as slow jogging – would have the same effect.

“If you are beyond the breakeven point, you may be doing yourself more harm than good,” said Audrey de Nazelle, a lecturer in air pollution management at Imperial College’s Centre for Environmental Policy, and one of the authors of the report.

The study, originally published in the journal Preventive Medicine before the World Health Organization’s latest global estimates, modelled the health effects of active travel and of air pollution. They measured air quality through average annual levels of PM2.5s, the tiny pollutant particles that can embed themselves deep in the lungs. This type of air pollution can occur naturally – from dust storms or forest fires, for example – but is mainly created by motor vehicles and manufacturing.

Breathing polluted air has been linked to infections including pneumonia, ischemic heart disease, stroke and some cancers. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Global Burden of Disease study ranks it among the top risk factors for loss of health.

The report in Preventive Medicine assumed cyclists moved at speeds of 12/14kph, with health benefits calculated in a similar way to the WHO’s Heat assessment tool. It also assumed cyclists used roads with double the background levels of air pollution, which may underestimate how poor air quality is in many developing world cities: for example, a study in Lagos found five out of eight sites exceeded Delhi’s annual PM2.5 concentration.

People commuting to work along busy roads in a city with average annual background PM2.5 levels of 160 micrograms per cubic metre (μg/m3) or above will pass the breakeven point at just 30 minutes a day, the study found. Using the WHO’s latest global estimates, published in May, those levels are only reached in Zabor, and in Allahabad and Gwalior in India – although many large cities in the developing world do not accurately measure air pollution so were not included in the WHO database.

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Fifteen cities (see map above and table below) have annual mean PM2.5 levels of 115μg/m3 or above, according to the WHO data, so the breakeven point is reached after an hour of active travel. Fine particulate levels above 80μg/m3 were found in 62 cities, making cycling more harmful than beneficial after two hours.

The study found people in western cities such as London, Paris or New York would never reach the point where PM2.5 air pollution’s negatives outweigh exercise’s positives in the long term.

“The benefits of active travel outweighed the harm from air pollution in all but the most extreme air pollution concentrations,” said Nazelle. “It is not currently an issue for healthy adults in Europe in general.”

London’s annual average PM2.5 pollution was estimated at 15μg/m3 by the WHO – above the WHO’s guideline of 10, but still at a level at which the study estimated active travel would always be beneficial. Paris had ambient PM2.5 levels of 18μg/m3, while New York had 9μg/m3.

However, the study did not consider the health impacts of short-term spikes in PM2.5 pollution, or take into account the effect of exercising in air containing larger PM10 particulates, ozone, or toxic nitrogen oxides (NOx) from diesel cars.

London mayor Sadiq Khan issued his first “very high” air pollution alert last month when air in the UK capital hit the maximum score of 10 on the Air Quality Index, equivalent to PM10 in excess of 101μg/m3. NOx pollution causes 5,900 early deaths a year in the city, and most air quality zones across Britain break legal limits.

“This is the highest level of alert and everyone – from the most vulnerable to the physically fit – may need to take precautions to protect themselves from the filthy air,” Khan warned.

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Source: Tipping point: revealing the cities where exercise does more harm than good | Cities | The Guardian

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The war against air pollution has begun – and it will be fought in cities 

Posted on February 13, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

The air pollution crisis is getting worse. As the world becomes increasingly urbanised, the battle will be won or lost on the streets of our cities

You never see ‘air pollution’ written as the cause on death certificates,” an expert once told me. If it was, she suggested, the enormous toll toxic air takes on the health of billions of the world’s people would prompt a global emergency response.

But the winds of change are now blasting the air pollution crisis to greater prominence – driven by new data, revelations about the impact of poisonous air on virtually all aspects of health and, crucially, the increasing anger of affected people and communities.

There is no doubt that air pollution is a global crisis: it causes 6.5 million early deaths a year. That is double the number of people lost to HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and four times the number killed on the world’s roads. In Africa, air pollution kills three times more people than malnutrition.

Half the early deaths result from indoor cooking with smoky fuels, a problem linked closely to poverty and readily solved, if the will and means exist. But the other half results from outdoor air pollution – caused by traffic, power stations, factories, construction, heating and more – and is far more dispersed and harder to tackle.

It is also getting worse, as the world’s population swells towards 9 billion and cities rapidly grow. Particulate pollution is the scourge of India, home to a host of terribly polluted cities, and many parts of the developing world where urbanisation is most rapid.

But developed nations face air pollution problems too. In Europe, the deviousness of car manufacturers and the failure of regulators have left diesel vehicles belching out many times more nitrogen dioxide than was ever thought safe. In the UK alone, illegal levels of NO2 cause more than 60 premature deaths a day.

Toxic air is a major cause of heart attacks, strokes and lung diseases – the causes that are put in death certificates. But researchers are finding ever more varied and worrying impacts of breathing noxious air.

Air pollution has now been linked to increased mental illness, diabetes and kidney disease, and toxic nanoparticles have been recently discovered in brains, suggesting a link to degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s. It is even thought to be prematurely ageing the faces of city dwellers, by accelerating wrinkles and age spots.

But perhaps the most worrying impacts are on children, whose lung development is stunted and whose intelligence can be reduced. Unicef found recently that 300 million children live in areas with extreme air pollution – six times higher than international guidelines – and that almost 90% of the world’s children live in places where outdoor air pollution exceeds World Health Organization limits.

Amid this gloom, there are glimmers of hope. China, for many years home to the worst air pollution hotspots in the world, has seen remarkable improvements in many places. Its drive to clear the air has been propelled by both the public’s concern for their health and fears about climate change.

Increasing efforts to fight global warming by cutting fossil fuel burning will help cut air pollution, not least because the rollout of electric cars is finally gathering pace. Some major world cities are also tackling direct action against their traffic smog, by setting dates by which the worst polluting cars will be banned. The huge cuts in health costs that could be won with cleaner air are also becoming better understood.

The battle against air pollution has finally begun, and it is on the streets of the world’s burgeoning cities that it will be won, or lost.

Guardian Cities is dedicating a week to exploring one of the worst preventable causes of death around the world: air pollution. Explore our coverage here and follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion

Source: The war against air pollution has begun – and it will be fought in cities | Cities | The Guardian

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A plan to clean up Britain’s toxic air 

Posted on February 12, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Pollution shortens Londoners’ lives by between nine and 16 months

GAZING out over London’s chimneys, Liverpool’s docks or Edinburgh’s spires can cloud a tourist’s judgment. Air pollution “plagues” Britain, says one UN official. The capital is particularly nasty, and compares poorly with other European cities (see chart). On some days last month particulate levels in London were higher even than in Beijing. On February 17th the mayor, Sadiq Khan, will launch a £10 ($12) “toxic charge” on the most polluting vehicles—broadly speaking those registered before 2005—to come into force in October.

Three pollutants cause most worry: nitrogen dioxide (a gas emitted in vehicle exhausts), ozone (a triatomic form of oxygen which harms the lungs) and tiny particulates, the smallest of which are the most damaging as they get deep into the lungs.

Chronic exposure means Londoners’ lives are between nine and 16 months shorter than they would otherwise be, according to a study by King’s College London. And sudden spikes leave inhabitants gasping. Acute episodes occur in three main ways, says Gary Fuller, who helps run King’s College’s air-quality monitoring network. First, pollution lingers if a layer of cold air forms close to the ground without wind, as happens during chilly months. Second, the circulation of dirty air around Europe’s large cities, as often happens in spring, causes southern England to suffer. And third, in summer, heat and the sun’s ultraviolet rays help to create smog.

British courts have given the government until the end of July to come up with a new plan to cut air pollution. It is likely to focus on cars. Poor air quality is a localised problem that can be caused by nearby airports, factories or power plants. But curbing vehicle-use helps in all cities—and traffic is one area in which Britain’s generally feeble city mayors have some power.

Because about half of certain particulate-matter that vehicles release comes from sources other than the exhaust pipe, such as brakes and tyres, stricter standards on emissions alone do not solve the problem. Paris, Madrid and Athens want to ban diesel cars and vans by 2025.

London will struggle to copy them. Less than a year ago British ministers rejected a diesel scrappage scheme, in which drivers would have been paid for trading in dirty old vehicles for cleaner ones. The political cost of angering diesel drivers, previously encouraged to buy the vehicles because of their lower carbon-dioxide emissions, made such a move impossible. But reports now suggest an updated scheme is under discussion. Mike Hawes of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, a lobby group, supports such a plan in principle, but frets that even with incentives, the poorest drivers may balk at shelling out for new, cleaner models.

Other schemes are needed. Company cars, which comprise about half of the new ones sold in Britain, are a taxable benefit. The levies paid on them are based largely on the amount of carbon dioxide they produce, making diesel cars the best to buy. Tweaking fiscal rules could change that. Investing in electric and other low-emission vehicles also helps: the government plans to spend £600m on them and the infrastructure they need, such as charging stations, by 2020. Even London’s buses, police cars and black cabs are cleaning up.

More people could stay away from the steering wheel altogether. Lesley Hinds, who has responsibility for transport and the environment on Edinburgh council, says a pilot scheme there to encourage children to walk to school, by closing roads outside nine primaries, has been so successful that it may become permanent. A trade-off exists, however. More space on the streets for pedestrians and cyclists means less for cars, leading to congestion. And the exhaust systems of snarled-up vehicles work less efficiently than those of ones on the move. So the fog of politics makes deciding on what mix of policies to use even harder.

Source: A plan to clean up Britain’s toxic air | The Economist

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Chinese air pollution linked to respiratory and cardiovascular deaths 

Posted on February 11, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

In the largest epidemiological study conducted in the developing world, researchers found that as exposures to fine particulate air pollution in 272 Chinese cities increase, so do deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

The researchers reported their results in “Fine Particulate Air Pollution and Daily Mortality: A Nationwide Analysis in 272 Chinese Cities,” published online ahead of print in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

“Fine particulate [PM2.5] air pollution is one of the key public health concerns in developing countries including China, but the epidemiological evidence about its health effects is scarce,” said senior study author Maigeng Zhou, PhD, deputy director of the National Center for Chronic and Non-communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “A new monitoring network allowed us to conduct a nationwide study to evaluate short-term associations between PM2.5 and daily cause-specific mortality in China.”

The researchers found:

* The average annual exposure to PM2.5 in the Chinese cities was 56 micrograms per cubic meter — well above the World Health Organization air quality guidelines of 10 ?g/m3.

* Each 10 μg/m3 increase in air pollution was associated with a 0.22 percent increase in mortality from all non-accident related causes.

* Each 10 μg/m3 increase in air pollution was associated with a 0.29 percent increase in all respiratory mortality and a 0.38 percent increase in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) mortality.

* Mortality was significantly higher among people age 75 and older and among people with lower levels of education.

* The association between PM2.5 levels and mortality was stronger in cities with higher average annual temperatures.

The researchers speculate that differences in educational attainment may result in environmental health inequalities and access to health care that affect mortality. In warmer cities, the authors hypothesize residents may spend more time outdoors and open windows, increasing their exposure to PM2.5.

The researchers said their study suggests a weaker association between increases in PM2.5 and mortality than studies conducted in Europe and North America. They suggest a number of possible explanations for this difference, including that in most Chinese cities there was a plateauing of mortality at the highest levels of pollution and the components of PM2.5 pollution in China may be less toxic than the components in Europe and North America. Crustal dust from arid lands and construction make up more PM2.5 pollution in China than it does in Europe and North America.

In 2013 China began introducing PM2.5 monitoring in urban areas. The current study analyzed available data between 2013-15. For nearly half the cities in the study, there was only one year of PM2.5 data available, and the authors note that a limitation of their study is that it does not look at the cumulative effect of PM2.5 over many years.

“Our findings may be helpful to formulate public health policies and ambient air quality standards in developing countries to reduce the disease burden associated with PM2.5 air pollution,” said study co-author Haidong Kan, MD, professor of public health at Fudan University in China. “Further massive investigations, especially looking at the long-term effect studies, are needed to confirm our results and to identify the most toxic components of PM2.5 in China.”

The report can be found online at: http://www.thoracic.org/about/newsroom/press-releases/resources/chinese-air-pollution.pdf

Source: Chinese air pollution linked to respiratory and cardiovascular deaths — ScienceDaily

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EPA issues air pollution warning for southern Taiwan

Posted on February 10, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) issued an air pollution warning on Thursday for southern Taiwan the following day. It forecast that the air quality index (AQI) in the cities and counties of Yunlin, Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung would flash orange, which indicates a level unhealthy for sensitive groups.

High particulate air pollution in areas of southern Taiwan on Friday will be caused by strong winds in the wake of a cold front that arrived on Thursday sending temperatures to new lows nationwide for the winter season, the EPA said.

The AQI in the other areas of the country will remain good to moderate, it added.

The EPA forecast that the AQI in southern Taiwan will remain orange from Feb. 11-12, while the index in central Taiwan will fall to the same level. During that period, air quality in other areas of the country will remain good to moderate, it said.

The EPA has a six-color AQI system; green represents good, with an index reading of 0-50; yellow indicates moderate at 50-100; orange means unhealthy for sensitive groups with a reading of 101-150; red indicates unhealthy with a range of 151-200; purple signifies very unhealthy with a level of 201-300; maroon represents hazardous with an index reading of 301-500.

Source: EPA issues air pollution warning for southern Taiwan | Society | FOCUS TAIWAN – CNA ENGLISH NEWS

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