Air pollution worst in 18 years in shopping areas

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

Hong Kong’s core business and shopping districts of Central, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok were enveloped in dangerously high air pollution levels for a combined total of more than 184 days last year, according to research by Friends of the Earth.

It was the worst year recorded since the air pollution index (API) was introduced 18 years ago.

The environmental group went through the API data for 2013 and found there were 184 days when the index recorded at roadside air monitoring stations in the three districts was above the 100 level specified as harmful.

That compares with 142 such days in 2012 and 172 days in 2011.

The worst-hit district was Central, where on 83 days last year the index topped 100, compared with 54 days in 2012.

The number of days with roadside API over 100 in Causeway Bay and Mong Kok was 61 and 40, respectively.

Friends of the Earth environmental officer Adrien Chen Kam-cheuk urged the government to speed up the introduction of electronic road pricing to discourage traffic entering Central.

“It is obvious that heavy traffic is to blame for Hong Kong’s worsening roadside air pollution,” Chen said. “With the wall effect because of the high-rise buildings, air pollutants are difficult to disperse.

“We believe the government should not drag its feet in introducing electronic road pricing to manage traffic flow in Central,” Chen said.

Last week, Secretary for Transport and Housing Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung said the government would consider a pilot scheme for electronic road pricing to manage traffic after completion of a bypass in 2017 linking Wan Chai and Central.

Public consultation on the scheme could start in 2016. But Chen said it would be too late.

According to the group’s research, the number of days on which roadside stations recorded air pollution index levels over 100 increased from 51 in 1999 to 102 in 2009, and 184 in 2013.

The API converts air pollution data into a value ranging from 0 to 500. Between 2005 and 2011 there were about 20 days a year when the API made it above 100.

In December last year, the Environmental Protection Department replaced the API with a new Air Quality Health Index.

The new system measures the short-term health risks of air pollution by analysing the three-hour average concentrations of four major pollutants – ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5).

via Air pollution worst in 18 years in shopping areas | South China Morning Post.

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Air pollution in Iran still heavy, officials seeking solution

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

Since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (started in March 2013), there have been only four healthy days in Tehran, the governor of Tehran province, Hossein Hashemi said, Iranian IRNA news agency reported on Feb. 24.

Hashemi made the remarks at the first meeting of the Tehran province administrative council, where various problems of the province were being discussed.

It should be noted that last Iranian calendar year Tehran experienced 147 days in which air quality was substandard based on the PSI (Pollutant Standards Index), according to Iranian Parliament’s Environment Committee Mohammadreza Tabesh.

Hossein Hashemi said that air pollution remains a serious issue for the capital city, and added that mostly, the pollution continues because people use old cars.

“Currently, there are about 8600 old taxis in Tehran, as well as about 252 000 old Samand and Pride model cars, the owners of which sometimes use their cars as taxis. And there are 200 000 more cars which work as taxis by phone,” he explained.

The air over Iran’s capital is amongst the most polluted in the world. Experts say many Iranians suffer serious health problems as a result.

Motor vehicles account for 70 percent of pollution in the Iranian capital. Low quality gasoline and diesel is partially responsible for the problem.

Hashemi further said that there are more issues that need direct attention, such as lack of electricity in some of Iran’s provinces, as well as pollution of water.

He noted that the country’s president Hassan Rouhani gave relevant orders to establish a committee for solving these problems.

via Air pollution in Iran still heavy, officials seeking solution – Trend.Az.

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Air pollution lowers sperm quality

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

MEN, TAKE HEED: living in the city could be harming your fertility.

That is the finding of a recent study published in the journal Environmental Pollution, which analysed semen samples from more than 1,300 men in China.

The study, led by researchers from China’s Third Military University, compared the quality of sperm from men living in Chongqing City, an industrial city in China’s south-west, to that of men from surrounding rural areas.

The researchers found that city-dwelling men had higher levels of abnormally shaped sperm than their rural counterparts. Their sperm also swam more slowly.

Both sperm shape and motility are important factors in determining male fertility.

The scientists attributed the poorer quality of sperm in urban areas to high levels of air pollution, with concentrations of particulate matter, sulphur dioxide and nitrous dioxide in Chongqing City exceeding World Health Organisation guidelines.

Concentrations of particulate matter were more than eight times guideline values.

Dr Ahmad Hammoud, an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah and Medical Director for the Utah Center for Reproductive Medicine, was not involved in the study, but is an expert in reproductive health.”Particulate matter carries with it polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs,” he said “These PAHs can have hormone-like activity…so they can possibly affect the hormonal balance in the body.”

Air-borne particulate matter may also contain many other industrial pollutants, such as lead, cadmium and mercury, which can also be toxic to sperm.

Hammoud said it can take up to three months from being exposed to pollution until effects on the sperm are seen.

“Sperm have a 72 day life-cycle. So exposure of the sperm right now in the testicles to those hormone-altering pollutants, you will see results in two to three months when the sperm are ejaculated.”

While the Chongqing study is not the first to make a link between declining sperm quality and air pollution, Hammoud cautions that this does not necessarily mean it is the smoking gun.

“Correlation does not mean causality…It is possible that people who live in areas that are polluted are also eating unhealthy diets or they are just living an unhealthy lifestyle,” he said.

“We have not yet been able to design the perfect study that answers the question once and for all.”

There has been considerable debate in the scientific community concerning reports of a global decline in sperm quality and male fertility.

In Australia, one in six couples has trouble conceiving naturally and half of the cases are related to male infertility. For Jo Immig from the National Toxics Network, the issue extends beyond impacts on male fertility.

“It strikes at the very heart of who we are as a species if we are actually starting to say that the things that we are doing to the environment are stopping us from reproducing,” she said.

“But this sits in a much more complex picture of what pollutants are actually doing overall to our health. It is not just at the reproductive level that they are affecting us, it is also the immune system, neurological problems in children, cancers…it is the full spectrum of disorders.”

via Air pollution lowers sperm quality – News – ABC Environment (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

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Air Pollution a Global Health Concern

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

Recent air pollution reports from China, India, and the United States bring awareness of the growing global health concern. In addition to increasing the risk of both heart and lung disease, pollution causes a slew of other serious health problems including neurodevelopment disorders that put severely polluted areas at risk, as well as the global community.

Researchers believe the global increase in air pollution levels may already be linked to the rising rates of disorders such as schizophrenia and autism, among others. In an annual meting of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences researchers detailed the potential effects of this exposure, particularly on the brain. Dr. Deborah Cory-Slechta described how she became involved with this research after reviewing the brains of mice who had been exposed to air pollution as part of a study on the developing lung.

In her examination she could not find a single region of the mice brains which did not show inflammation. To further analyze the initial findings Cory-Slectha and her team conducted a second set of experiments exposing rodents to unfiltered from Rochester, NY. In the end of the study the rodents brains exhibited similar developmental brain damage to what is seen in patients with autism and schizophrenia. The white matter in the mice brains was missing. This is the part of the brain that connects the two hemispheres, and in these mice it either died or never developed.

The mice brains also exhibited enlargement of the ventricles, called ventriculomegly, which is associated with a range of other brain diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, bipolar disorder, and a number of birth defects. Cory Slectha and her team hope this research will bring awareness to this global health concern and lower the air pollution limits in regulations around the world.

Some places are notably worse than others. The Chinese government raised Beijing’s four-tiered smog alert to “orange” this week as the city’s smog levels reached to dangerous levels. Heavy smog blanketed the city, and the alert level lead to bans on barbecues, fireworks, and halted demolition work.

If the current levels in Beijing persist through the weekend the government will be forced to raise the urgency level to “red.” Lung cancer rates in the city have nearly doubled, and Chinese officials estimate that the country’s pollution issue is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people every year. China has plans to curb the problem which include spending $162 billion to clean up primary sources of pollutants.

In India, air pollution levels have reached an all-time-high, and concern for global and local health from the issue has reached a state of emergency. More asthma-related death reports come from India than anywhere else in the world, and air pollution indoors and outdoors are the third and fifth leading causes of death in the country, respectively. According to the World Bank, the issue is costing India $80 billion annually, and is responsible for 23 percent of India’s child mortality.

via Air Pollution a Global Health Concern.

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Bulgaria chokes on air pollution fueled by poverty

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

The smokestacks of Kremikovtzi steel mill on Sofia’s outskirts may have shut down years ago, but ancient cars ensure that Bulgaria’s capital is still the most polluted in Europe.

When the steel plant went bankrupt in 2008, it did little to improve the thick smog that still hangs over Sofia.

Experts say old cars and chronic traffic jams are to blame, made worse by the capital’s location in a lowland surrounded by mountains.

Out of the 250,000 cars bought in 2013, only 20,000 were new, says Lyubomir Dorosiev, head of a used car dealer association.

“We have become Europe’s vehicle cemetery since car catalytic converters are obligatory in developed countries.

“The authorities do not encourage the purchase of new cars under the pretext that they care about the poor,” said Krastyo Peev, a car technician in Sofia.

A recent study by the European Environment Agency (EAA) found that Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest nation, has four of the five most polluted cities in the bloc.

The exception is the Polish city of Krakow at number three.

The top spot went to Pernik, an industrial city of 80,000 people around 30 kms southwest of Sofia.

“It’s suffocating,” moaned grocer Kalina Hristova. “Especially on winter evenings as most people burn coal but also tires and plastic bottles” for heating, the 32-year-old said.

Pernik breached EU safety limits for air pollution for half of the year, against a target of 35 days. Pollution is measured by the concentration of tiny droplets from smokestacks, vehicle tailpipes and other pollutants — known as particulate matter.

That compares with just 29 days for Belgium and 15 for Paris, the study showed, although it was still far below the off-the-chart levels in some Asian cities like Beijing and New Delhi.

Sofia itself ranked 11th on the EAA chart, winning the prize as the most polluted capital in Europe– far ahead of Bucharest, ranked 57th, and Ljubljana, at 75th.

The culprit for more than half of this small Black Sea nation’s air pollution — 58 percent — is smoke emanating from home stoves, according to Bulgaria’s environment protection agency. And grinding poverty — especially in the smaller towns — has driven up the share of people burning wood, coal and all kinds of waste to ward off the chilly east Balkan winters.

In the northern town of Vratsa, many have given up more expensive central heating as they can no longer afford it.

A mere 250 families have switched to central heating with gas, as most could not pay for the costly equipment, gas network supervisor Dimitar Dimitrov explained.

“We stopped the central heating in our apartment and burn wood that we keep on the balcony,” said retired teacher Evdokia Slavova.

The chemical plant that used to poison Vratsa’s air was shut after the fall of communism, plunging the town into poverty and unemployment.

“Now we poison the air ourselves,” Slavova said. Air pollution aggravates cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and has disastrous effects on the nervous and reproductive system that can lead to cancer and early death, the EEA agency warned.

The use of wood and coal for heating was however only part of the problem, experts said, pointing a finger at the fact that 43 percent of the electricity in the country comes from thermal power plants.

According to Greenpeace Bulgaria, dust particles and sulphur dioxide emitted from outdated thermal plants are responsible for 2,000 early deaths every year. Bulgaria has the highest concentrations of carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide from the industry and automobile traffic, said Ivaylo Popov from the non-governmental organization For the Earth.

via Bulgaria chokes on air pollution fueled by poverty | Arab News — Saudi Arabia News, Middle East News, Opinion, Economy and more..

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Tourists attractions in London harbour illegal levels of air pollution

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

Tourists visiting attractions in London are exposed to air pollution four times the European legal limit, it has been reported.

All of the 50 most polluted locations in the UK are in the capital, including streets outside the toy shop Hamley’s, and Madame Tussauds near Regent’s Park.

The gas, Nitrogen Dioxide (N02), is linked to serious respiratory problems, and around 29,000 people are known to die prematurely every year in the UK from air pollution.

Campaigners are calling for older diesel engines, which mainly produce the gas, to be banned.

The figures released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) under a Freedom of Information Act request by The Telegraph, show that Grosvenor Place, the road alongside Buckingham Palace, harbours the highest levels of NO2 in the whole country.

On average, there are 152 micrograms of NO2 per cubic meter of air on the road, almost four times the European legal limit of 40 micrograms.

Lower Grosvenor Place on the other side of Green Park, which borders the palace, both register NO2 levels more than double the legal limit.

The western end of Oxford Street near Marble Arch, registered an annual average of 150 micrograms per cubic metre of air – the second highest level in the country.

Meanwhile, Cockspur Street near Trafalgar Square has the third-highest level at 138 micrograms.

Those who visit the British Museum, the National Theatre, Covent Garden, and Houses of Parliament are also exposed to high levels of pollution.

Environmental campaigner Simon Birkett, director of Clean Air in London, told the newspaper: “The thought that hundreds of thousands or millions of tourists and Londoners in a year may be exposed to air pollution this high is deeply troubling.”

Mr Birkett suggests that older diesel cars should be banned as they are in central Berlin, Germany.

A spokeswoman for Boris Johnson, mayor of London, told The Telegraph the number of people living in areas where NO2 levels exceeded legal limits had halved since his election in 2008.

via Tourists attractions in London harbour illegal levels of air pollution – Home News – UK – The Independent.

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China Strengthens Monitoring as Beijing’s Air Pollution Persists

Posted on February 23, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

Beijing’s air pollution reached eight times World Health Organization-recommended levels as smog in the city persisted for a fourth day, prompting China’s environmental protection regulator to send inspection teams to the capital and surrounding areas.

The concentration of PM2.5, fine particulates that pose the greatest risk to human health, was 198 micrograms per cubic meter near the Tiananmen Square in China’s capital at 11 a.m, the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center said on its website. The WHO recommends levels of no higher than 25 micrograms per cubic meter in 24 hours.

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection said today it has dispatched 12 groups to Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province to determine if local authorities have taken adequate measures against air pollution and whether curbs on steel, coal, glass panel and cement production are in place. The regulator also sent an urgent notice requiring local governments to better predict air quality and make timely disclosure to the public.

Beijing maintained its air pollution alert at orange, triggering orders for some enterprises to limit production and a ban on outdoor barbecues and fireworks, as smog levels were projected to stay hazardous until at least Monday morning.

Pollution in Beijing and Shanghai placed them among the least hospitable of 40 international cities listed in a report by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, which ranked China’s capital second from bottom, ahead of Moscow.

Smog will persist until Monday morning in Beijing, Tianjin, and parts of Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, Xinhua reported today, citing China’s meteorological agency. The agency forecast the smog will ease on Thursday when a cold front is expect bring winds.

via China Strengthens Monitoring as Beijing’s Air Pollution Persists – Bloomberg.

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India’s Air Pollution Triggers Comparisons with China

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Respro® UK Ltd

In the Indian capital, New Delhi, levels of air pollution hit a new high this winter, triggering concerns about its adverse impact on public health, and particularly on children. Environmentalists compare New Delhi with Beijing, the other major city also grappling with high air pollution, but warn that unlike the Chinese capital, India is not doing enough to tackle the growing problem.

Pediatrician Sanjeev Bagai sees about 50 children every day at a hospital, in an upscale market area in New Delhi. He said nearly half his young patients suffer from respiratory and chest infections related to air pollution. He called the situation “alarming.”

“Numbers have doubled. These children who grow up with COPD, that is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, die earlier. They are predisposed toward heart disease, neurological problems,” said Bagai.

During a decade of economic growth, Delhi has added more cars than any other Indian city, many of them using diesel, a fuel that produces a great deal of pollution. Today, the Indian capital has a staggering 7.5 million vehicles, choking not just its roads, but also its air.

Anumita Roychowdhury, Executive Director of New Delhi’s Center for Science and Environment, said that in just five years levels of particulate matter, which penetrates deep into the lungs, has gone up by 75 percent. The situation worsens in winter when it is less windy and a mixture of fog, car exhausts, soot and dust shrouds the city in gray smog.

Roychowdhury said that this winter, “the situation absolutely exploded.”

“Throughout the winter, the data showed that the levels were two to three times higher than the standards, and the higher ranges reached up to four to seven times the standards. And when we had the special smog episodes, when things were very bad, then the levels would even hit eight to ten times the standard. It was literally a blanket of smog. And this is scary,” said Roychowdhury.

The high air pollution levels have triggered a debate on whether Delhi’s air has become dirtier than that of the Chinese capital, Beijing, which has long been under scrutiny for its dismal air quality among the world’s big cities. Delhi’s comparisons with Beijing began after a study by Yale and Columbia University ranked India at 174 out of 178 countries in air quality.

Environmentalists think what counts is not whether Delhi’s air is more polluted than that of the Chinese capital, but whether the Indian capital is doing enough to tackle a fast-growing problem.

Roychowdhury is a member of a state body appointed to draft measures to deal with the pollution, and pointed out that while Beijing has taken a wide range of actions to tackle the problem, Delhi has not. For example, Beijing has limited the number of cars that can be sold in the city, scaled up public transport and issues health advisories on bad days.

“That is exactly what is missing right now in Delhi. [The] Delhi government does not inform people on a daily basis the quality of the air people are breathing, and when levels go very high, the asthmatics, those who are suffering from respiratory problems, cardiac problems, they need to be warned about it. The government should have contingency plans in place and longer term plans to be able to bring down the overall levels. It is not a fight over their levels versus our levels,” said Roychowdhury.

An action plan formed to tackle air pollution has languished for nearly two years.

Meanwhile, Delhi’s toxic air extracts a heavy price on public health. The World Health Organization said air pollution is the fifth largest killer in India, and the country has the world’s highest death rate because of chronic respiratory problems.

Several studies show that the impact is the worst on the city’s children, whose immune systems are less developed than that of adults.

The most extensive study has been conducted by the Chittaranjan National Cancer Research Institute, in Kolkata, for the Central Pollution Control Board. The study consisted of 10,000 children across the city from different economic classes and was led by Manas Ranjan Ray.

“We found that compared with the children from relatively clean air areas, children in Delhi suffer more from lung ailment, bronchitis, bronchial asthma as well as some neurological problems, some behavioral problems. In a nutshell, air pollution in Delhi affects both the physical and mental health of the children,” said Ray.

The Indian Supreme Court recently heard a petition that said air pollution causes the death of 3,000 children every year in Delhi. It has asked authorities what they are doing about it.

However, air pollution has yet to become a top issue with either the public or policy makers. With India heading for elections, and the gray smog of winter giving way to clearer skies, there is unlikely to be any quick action to address the issue.

via India’s Air Pollution Triggers Comparisons with China.

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