The municipality of Puchuncaví in central Chile turns greens after days of rain, but next to it are the smokestacks of the industries located in this development pole that turned this town and the neighboring town of Quintero into "sacrifice zones", with the emission of pollutants that damaged the environment and the health of local residents, which will finally begin to be dismantled. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

By Orlando Milesi
QUINTERO, Chile, Jul 4 2022 (IPS)

A health crisis that in 20 days left 500 children poisoned in the adjacent municipalities of Quintero and Puchuncaví triggered the decision to close the Ventanas Smelter, in a first concrete step towards putting an end to a so-called “sacrifice zone” in Chile.

The measure was supported by President Gabriel Boric who reiterated his determination to move towards a green government.

The decision by the state-owned National Copper Corporation (Codelco), the world’s leading copper producer, was announced on Jun. 17, following a temporary stoppage of the plant eight days earlier, and was opposed only by the powerful Federation of Copper Workers.

The union reacted by calling a strike, which ended after two days, when the leaders agreed to discuss an organized closure of the smelter, which will take place within a maximum of five years. The smelting and refining facility will be replaced by another modern plant at a site yet to be determined.

The smelter is an outdated facility that has suffered repeated episodes of sulfur dioxide pollution, one of the chemicals causing the deteriorating health of the inhabitants of Quintero, a city of 26,000, and Puchuncaví, population 19,000.

In the last three years Codelco invested 152 million dollars to modernize the smelter but without success, admitted Codelco’s president, Máximo Pacheco.

Pacheco argued that the closure was due to “the climate of uncertainty that has existed for decades, which is very bad for the workers, their families and the community.”

Sara Larraín, executive director of the non-governmental organization Sustainable Chile, said the definitive closure of the plant does justice.

“It is the first step for Quintero and Puchuncaví to get out of the category of damage that is called a ‘sacrifice zone’ where for decades the emission standards have been exceeded,” she told IPS.

“Sacrifice zones” are areas that have suffered excessive environmental damage due to industrial pollution. Residents of poor communities in these areas bear a disproportionate burden of pollution, toxic waste and heavy industry.

The back of the Ventanas Smelter reveals the poor operating conditions of the copper processing facility in Chile, which will be replaced by a new one within a maximum of five years at an as yet undefined site. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

The two adjacent municipalities, 156 kilometers west of Santiago, qualify as a sacrifice zone, as do Mejillones, Huasco and Tocopilla, in the north, and Coronel in southern Chile, because the right to live in a pollution-free environment is violated in these areas.

In Quintero and Puchuncaví the main source of sulfur dioxide is the Ventanas Smelter, responsible for 61.8 percent of emissions of this element, causing widespread health problems.

Fisherman-diver forced to move away returns to Quintero

Carlos Vega, a fishermen’s union leader in Quintero, is the third generation of divers in his family.

“My grandfather, a fisherman, taught me how to make fishing nets. He had a restaurant on the coast,” he told IPS, visibly moved, adding that his two brothers are also fishermen and divers, who catch shellfish among the rocks along the coast.

“Fishing was profitable here. We were doing well and making money,” he said.

He added that people are well-organized in the area. “At one time we were the largest producer” of seafood and fish for central Chile, “because we had management and harvesting areas. But they had to close because of the pollution,” he said, describing the poverty that befell the local fishers in the late 1980s.

Then the health authorities found copper, cadmium and arsenic in the local seafood and banned its harvest. As a result, the small fishermen’s bay where they keep their boats and sell part of their catch lost their customers.

The crisis forced him to move to the south where he worked for 15 years as a professional diver in a salmon company.

Carlos Vega, a fisherman, diver and trade union leader, and Kata Alonso, spokeswoman for Women of Sacrifice Zones in Resistance, pose for a photo in the bay of Quintero, during the celebrations in that town and in neighboring Puchuncaví for the announcement of the definitive closure of the Ventanas Smelter of the state-owned Codelco copper company, whose polluting emissions have damaged the local environment and made local residents sick for decades. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Today, back in Quintero, with two sons who are engineers and a daughter who is a teacher, he continues to dive, albeit sporadically. He participates along with 27 fishermen in the management area granted to the north of the sacrifice zone, where they extract shellfish quotas two or three times a year.

“The social fabric was broken down here, that is the hardest thing that has happened to us,” said Vega.

Codelco is not the only polluter

Codelco is the main exporter in Chile, a long narrow country of 19.1 million people sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains where the big mines are located. In 2021 it produced 1.7 million tons of copper and its pre-tax income totaled nearly 7.4 billion dollars.

“Chile is the leading global copper producer and the world is going to become more electric every day,” said Pacheco. “And copper is the conductor par excellence, there is no substitute. We have to be ready for copper to be increasingly in demand in this energy transition.”

The president of Codelco emphasized that the wealth does not lie in exporting concentrate, which has 26 percent copper, but anodes with 99 percent purity, “and for that we need a smelter and a refinery.”

Young residents of Quintero and Puchuncaví came out in a drum line to celebrate the closure of the Ventanas Smelter and participate in a Festival for Life which lasted eight hours and was joined by a hundred local and national artists. Thousands of people gathered in the square which is on the edge of Quintero on Saturday, Jun. 25. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

But the smelter, he explained, must be modern and not like Ventanas, which only captures 95 percent of the gases released. In the last three years, Codelco has lost 50 million dollars in the Ventanas smelter, which has a production scale of 420,000 tons. A modern Flash furnace produces 1.5 million tons and captures 99.8 percent of the gases.

The Ventanas Smelter employs 348 people and another 400 in associated companies. Half of them do not live in the area but in Viña del Mar, Villa Alemana or Quilpué, towns that are also in the region of Valparaíso, but are located far from the pollution.

The smelter is part of an industrial cluster that includes 16 companies.

After the latest health crisis, the authorities decreed contingency plans in plants and maritime terminals of six companies for emitting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and applied an Atmospheric Prevention and Decontamination Plan.

Four coal-fired thermoelectric plants also pollute the area, one of which was definitively closed in December 2020 and another that was to be closed last May, although the measure was postponed.

According to environmentalist Larraín, when the smelter and the four thermoelectric plants are closed “better standards can be achieved, at least with respect to sulfur dioxide and heavy metals,” in Quintero and Puchuncaví.

View from the road of the Ventanas Smelter, in central Chile, which has been temporarily shut down since Jun. 9 and whose antiquated facilities will be permanently closed in a maximum of five years. They are adjacent to populated areas that have been turned into so-called “sacrifice zones” where local residents periodically suffer environmental and health emergencies due to sulfur dioxide fumes. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

The plan to continue decontaminating

Other pollutants are VOCs linked to the refineries of the state-owned oil company Empresa Nacional de Petróleo (Enap) and the private company Gasmar.

Kata Alonso, spokeswoman for the Mujeres en Zona de Sacrificio en Resistencia (Women in Sacrifice Zone in Resistance) collective, told IPS that “the prevention plan is good so that people don’t continue to be poisoned, so that they can breathe better, and so that the companies that pollute can close their doors, instead of the schools.

“There are companies that were built before the environmental law was passed that have not taken health measures. So what we are asking is for each company to be evaluated, and those that do not comply with the regulations must leave,” she said.

The repeated crises occur despite the fact that Chile’s environmental standards are below those of the World Health Organization (WHO).

For level 10 particulate matter, the mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets in the air, the ceiling in Chile is 150 milligrams per cubic meter (m3) and the WHO ceiling is 50.

For particulate matter 2.5 (fine inhalable particles), in Chile the limit is 50 milligrams per m3, while the WHO guideline is 25. And the Chilean ceiling for sulfur dioxide is 250 milligrams per m3 compared to the WHO’s limit of 20.

Three years ago, the Chilean Pediatric Society and the Chilean Medical Association requested that Chile raise its emission standards to WHO levels.

Part of the audience at the Festival for Life, which celebrated the closure of a copper smelter, that along with 15 other industrial plants turned the municipalities of Quintero and Puchuncaví into “sacrifice zones” in central Chile. Performances by musicians and other artists from around the country were interspersed with messages calling for a life free of pollution in the area. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Alonso the activist said that “my two neighbors died of cancer, whoever you ask in Puchuncaví has relatives who died of cancer. Today people are dying younger, breast and uterine cancer have increased in young women, and there are so many miscarriages.

“The statistic we have is that one in four children in Puchuncaví are born with severe neurological problems, down syndrome, autism. Here in Quintero there are two special education schools and many children with learning disabilities,” she said.

Larraín called for “government support for those who have been affected by irreversible diseases, asthma, lung cancer and others that have been proven to be caused by coal combustion and heavy metals.”

The Catholic University conducted a study using data on hospitalizations and mortality in Tocopilla, Mejillones, Huasco, Quintero and Puchuncaví.

“The rates for cardiovascular disease associated with industrial processes are clear. In some cases they are 900 percent higher. Calling them sacrifice zones is real, it refers to impacts that are occurring today,” said Larraín.

The environmentalist said it would be difficult to revive Quintero Bay “because it has a gigantic layer of coal at the bottom, dead phyto and zooplankton because water is used for cooling in industrial processes and is dumped back out with antialgaecides that kill marine life.”

She believes, however, that “over the years, the capacity for regeneration is possible, even in agriculture that has been lost due to sulfur dioxide emissions. There may also be a recovery in fishing and tourism.”

But Larraín demanded “a just transition that restores healthy levels and regenerates ecosystems so that local communities can sustain their economy in a healthy and ecologically balanced environment.”

A view of India Gate, a war memorial located in New Delhi, covered by a thick layer of smog. Credit: Malav Goswami/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
NEW DELHI , Nov 19 2019 (IPS)

Ankita Gupta, a housewife from south Delhi, is anxious about whether she should send her 4-year-old daughter to kindergarten. Outside visibility is poor as smog — a combination of emissions from factories, vehicle exhausts, coal plants and chemicals reacting with sunlight — has settled over the city, surpassing dangerous levels.

Gupta knows that sending her daughter to school is akin to forcefully taking her inside a chemical factory and filling the toddler’s lungs with toxic and lethal smoke.

“Why should I endanger her life by letting her travel through the roads, which are infested with the toxic air? Everything comes later. It is her health which for me is supreme,” she told IPS.

Last week, New Delhi, India’s capital with a population of 11 million, shut down schools for the second time in two weeks, 17 flights were diverted and several delayed due to poor visibility and construction across the city was halted as the Air Quality Index (AQI) measured 447. The AQI works on a scale of 0 to 500, where 0 measures good air quality and 500 measures hazardous.

The government responded declaring a public health emergency.

Children at risk from high levels of air pollution

Gupta is not the lone parent here who has been plunged into anxiety by the city’s worsening air quality.

Bijay Kumar, a mid-level employee in Delhi government, has similar concerns.

Last week, Kumar’s 14-year-old daughter, Ruchi, returned home from school with chest pains and sudden breathlessness. Her family rushed her to hospital where they were told that the ongoing high pollution was a cause of Ruchi’s illness. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), air pollution is linked to cases of pneumonia, stroke and ischaemic heart disease (characterised by reduced blood supply to the heart).

Courtesy: World Health Organisation (WHO)

Ruchi was admitted to hospital for two days.

“I even fret to imagine what if something bad had happened to my daughter. This toxic smoke is killing us all silently,” Kumar told IPS.

According to Sanjeev Verma, an environmental activist, air pollution in Delhi is becoming a silent killer, brutally murdering newborns, pregnant women and the elderly.

“Various studies have revealed that air pollution in Delhi is responsible for approximately 10,000 to 30,000 annual deaths. It is more than the people getting killed by the terror attacks on the country evert year. We are in a dire need to take drastic measures to put lid over the crises or else, the situation will turn catastrophic very very soon,” Verma told IPS. 

System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR), an air quality information service in India, also issued an advisory, asking people to reduce prolonged or heavy exertion.

“Take more breaks and do less intense activities. Asthmatics, keep medicine ready if symptoms of coughing or shortness of breath occur. Heart patients, see doctor, if get palpitations, shortness of breath, or unusual fatigue,” it said.

Too many private cars on the roads

But the heart of the pollution problem lies with the city’s overburdened roads, according to Samiya Noor, a research scholar in environment studies. Noor told IPS that the lakhs of public and private vehicles driving on Delhi roads every day contribute to nearly 72 percent of the city’s worsening air quality.

According to a 2019 economic survey, there are more than 10 million vehicles on the city’s roads very day, emitting toxic gases that play a major factor in worsening the air quality of country’s capital.  

Noor told IPS that in addition to vehicular pollution, domestic pollution, industrial emission, road dust, construction and the burning of garbage also contributes to Delhi’s total pollution load.

There has also been an 18.35 percent increase in industries operational  in Delhi in the last decade.

“In many of the industries, installed air pollution control devices are found in idle conditions which lead to the emission of pollutants directly into the atmosphere without any filtration. Construction of short chimneys also restricts the polluting gases from escaping into the upper layers of the atmosphere. This all, in unison, is wreaking havoc,” Noor said.

• The government is already restricting the number of vehicles on the roads. Known as the odd-even vehicle rule, private cars with old and even numbers on their licence plates are only allowed on the roads on alternating days.
• It was first implemented in 2016 and subsequently stopped in 2017. However, it was implemented again this month as smog levels rose but stopped last week.
• The government has also attributed, in part, the declining air quality to the burning of crop residue in north India.   

Humayun’s Tomb, a UNESCO Heritage site built in 1570, in New Delhi last week. Air pollution in New Delhi hit hazardous levels, forcing government to shut down schools and declare a public health emergency. Credit: Malav Goswami/IPS

A government response but is it enough?

This July, India formally joined the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), becoming the 65^th country to join the partnership. The announcement underlined the country’s commitment to combat air pollution with a solutions-oriented approach.  

India also announced that it will work with coalition countries to adopt cleaner energy producation and management practices to promote clean air.

The BBC also reported that municipal authorities were also “converting vehicles to cleaner fuel, restricting vehicle use at specific times, banning the use of polluting industrial fuel, prohibiting the entry of the dirtiest vehicles into the city and closing some power stations”. 

But Rajesh Bhatia, a social activist based in New Delhi, said government efforts were not enough and the active participation of people is required to reduce the ongoing pollution in the county’s capital.

According to Bhatia, the use of public transport needs to be promoted and  an adequate number of feeder buses for Metro stations had to be provided. 

“There have been various researchers who have shown how frequent checking of Pollution Under Control Certificates [a certificate issued after a test on a vehicle’s emission levels] needs to be undertaken by the civic authorities in order to ensure that vehicles are emitting gases within permissible norms. People need to be educated to switch-off their vehicles when waiting at traffic intersections,” Bhatia told IPS. 

But as the country’s parliament convenes for the second day of its winter session in Delhi, pollution in the capital is expected to top the agenda. 

Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, told reporters outside parliament yesterday that the government was slowly switching to electric vehicles but urged people to use public transport rather than their private vehicles.  

But for Sanjeev Sharma, a retired government school teacher, it is time to bid adieu to New Delhi — where he has lived for a quarter of a century. 

Along with his ailing wife, who is suffering from chronic bronchitis, Sharma is moving to Bangalore a southern India state where his son is working as a network engineer.

Sharma told IPS that in the very beginning of November, his wife’s health began to deteriorate and suffocation became a constant complaint. “She is on constant oxygen support but the medicos attending attending her told us that her condition is only worsening instead of getting any better in spite of increasing the  daily drug dose,” Sharma told IPS. 

While the capital is currently experiencing reduced levels of pollution, these are expected to rise dramatically by Thursday, according to SAFAR.

“Delhi is no longer a place to live during the winters. The air is getting thinker with toxic smoke with each passing day.

“Gone are the days when you used to find the place green and clean.”

** Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams in Johannesburg.

Panoramic view of a neighbourhood in southern Mexico City, with buildings semi-hidden by air pollution. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Martin Khor
PENANG, Nov 14 2016 (IPS)

As evidence mounts on the threats posed by air pollution to both human health and the environment, action must be urgently taken to address this problem.  

At the global level, the Paris Agreement that came into force on 10 November aims to get countries to significantly reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions and to better cope with climate change.

In May 2016, Health Ministers approved a global “roadmap” to address air pollution at the World Health Assembly.  And the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, adopted in 2015, contain accompanying targets for reducing air pollution.

But much more needs to be done, especially at the national level, to seriously tackle this crisis.

The adverse health effects of air pollution have been growing worse with a 8% increase from 2008 to 2013 in deaths globally caused by urban air pollution, according to World Health Organisation data. Although the situation has improved in developed countries, it has deteriorated in most developing countries.

Countering air pollution should thus be a top priority. What should be done?   First, more details and data should be collected in all countries, through improvements in monitoring air pollution and its adverse health effects.

Second, a public education campaign is needed to make the public more aware of the dangers of air pollution so they can take actions to prevent the pollution and to avoid being exposed.

Third, and most important, the causes of the pollution must be identified and action plans drawn up to eliminate or reduce the factors these sources.

Martin Khor

Outdoor air pollution is caused by transport vehicles that emit pollutants, coal-fired power plants, industrial factories, burning of wastes and fires in forest and agricultural areas.  Indoor pollution is mainly caused by the use of fuels that are based on wood and coal.

Besides the direct effects on human health, the pollution is also a major cause of global warming, which in turn also affects health.

It is thus doubly important to tackle these causes.  Actions should include the following:

• Reduce vehicle emissions through better energy-efficiency and air-pollution standards for vehicles and control of private transport.
• Give priority to public transport and promote clean transport such as railways, bicycles and walkways
• Phase out of coal powered plants, shift to clean modes of power generation, and promote renewable energy
• Impose strict air pollution controls in industry and phase in clean low-emissions technologies.
• Promote energy efficiency in the design of buildings.
• Phase out the use of wood and charcoal as household fuels used in traditional stoves, and replace them with safe and efficient stoves.
• Reduce waste through recycling and reuse, introduce alternatives to open incineration of solid waste and stop the open burning of household wastes.
• Stop the burning of forests, mangroves and in agriculture; this is the most important to prevent the South-east Asian “haze.”
• Take measures so as to adhere to the WHO guidelines for outdoor and indoor air pollution. (The WHO guideline for particulate matter (PM) outdoor pollution is 10 microgram per cubic meter annual mean for particles below the size of 2.5 microns in diameter, and 20 microgram for particles below 10 microns in size).

Drastically reducing air pollution would be tackling the world’s biggest health and environmental problems, as air pollution is the major source of deaths and diseases, as well as the main cause of climate change
Air pollution reduction measures should become part of wider health and environmental strategies and be given priority and resources in the country’s development plans.

The problem must also be given the global attention it deserves.  In May 2016, the World Health Assembly for the first time adopted a road map to tackle air pollution and its causes. (WHA Document A69/18;  6 May 2016).  The four-point road map calls on the health sector to:

• Expand the knowledge base on air pollution, its health effects and effectiveness of policies;
• Increase monitoring of air pollution locally and assess the health impacts of its sources;
• Take on a leadership role in national policies to respond to air pollution and at the global level;
• Build its own capacity to influence policy and decision making processes to take joint action on air pollution and health.

The UN’s Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by world leaders in September 2015, also has goals and targets relevant to air pollution.   These include goals and associated targets relevant to health (Goal 3); cities (Goal 11) and household energy (Goal 7).   The three indicators most relevant to air pollution are:

• SDG Indicator 3.9.1 for goal 3 on health (mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution);
• SDG Indicator 11.6.2 for goal 11 on cities (annual mean levels of fine particulate matter (PM) in cities; and
• SDG Indicator 7.1.2 for goal 7 on energy (proportion of population with primary reliance on clean fuels and technologies).

Cutting down on air pollution, which is closely related to emissions of Greenhouse Gases, is one the major actions (if not the very top action) countries are expected to take to fight climate change, and thus most relevant to the implementation of the Paris Agreement of the UN Climate Change Convention adopted in December 2015.

Indeed, drastically reducing air pollution would be tackling the world’s biggest health and environmental problems, as air pollution is the major source of deaths and diseases, as well as the main cause of climate change.

Action plans on air pollution are thus urgently needed at both national and global levels.

“Fast action to tackle air pollution can’t come soon enough,” said Dr Maria Neira, WHO Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health. “Solutions exist with sustainable transport in cities, solid waste management, access to clean household fuels and cook-stoves, as well as renewable energies and industrial emissions reductions.”

We are only at the starting phase of understanding the huge health problem that air pollution causes.  We have however been made conscious of the grave crisis that it has caused to the environment.

While the actions needed are quite clear, getting them implemented will be an immense challenge, as the causes of air pollution are presently so embedded in modern lifestyles and economic structures.

Excerpt:

Dark pollution clouds over Cairo. Credit: Khaled Moussa Al-Omrani/IPS.

By Martin Khor
PENANG, Nov 11 2016 (IPS)

New research is showing that air pollution is a powerful if silent killer, causing 6.5 million worldwide deaths as well as being the major cause of climate change.   

Air pollution has emerged as a leading cause of deaths and serious ailments in the world.  Emissions that cause air pollution and are Greenhouse Gases are also the main factor causing climate change.

Therefore, drastically reducing air pollution should now be treated as a top priority.

The seriousness of this problem was highlighted by the heavy smog that enveloped New Delhi for days at the beginning of November, forcing the government to declare an emergency, schools to be closed and a ban on construction work for several days.

The level of the harmful PM2.5 pollutants had almost reached 1,000 at some times in the Indian capital city, far above the safety level of 60.

Recent research shows that air pollution is the number one environmental cause of human deaths and kills more people annually worldwide than road accidents, violence, fires and wars combined.

This “silent killer” is not as dramatic or visible as car crashes, murders, terrorist attacks or natural disasters, but it is nevertheless even more dangerous as it contaminates vital organs, causing serious diseases and deaths to many millions of people.

Altogether 6.5 million people worldwide are estimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to have died prematurely in 2012 because of air pollution.

This means that of the 56 million deaths worldwide in 2012, 11.6% or one in nine were attributable to air pollution.

In comparison, there were 5 million deaths from all injuries including from road accidents (1.3 million deaths), falls, fires, and war in 2012, according to WHO data.

Martin Khor

Indeed, air pollution may have become one of the top killers. Tobacco use, usually described as the world’s leading preventable cause of death, is responsible for nearly 6 million deaths annually, or around 10% of total deaths.

Air pollution may have overtaken it as the world’s leading cause of death.

The WHO estimates that there are 4.3 million deaths attributable to indoor pollution and another 3.7 million deaths to outdoor pollution.

Because some deaths may be due to both outdoor and indoor pollution, it is not possible to add up the two figures to obtain the total deaths.

Thus in its latest estimate in September 2016, the WHO has explained that there were 6.5 million deaths from outdoor and indoor air pollution combined in 2012.

Young children are among the most vulnerable to the effects of air pollution.  A new UNICEF study released on 31 October 2016 found  air pollution is a major contributing factor in the deaths of around 600,000 children under five every year, and that around 2 billion children live in areas where outdoor air pollution exceeded the WHO air quality guidelines.
Besides its threat to human lives and health, air pollution is also the major cause of climate change as it is linked to much of the Greenhouse Gas emissions.

The Paris Agreement of the UN Climate Change Conference that came into force on 10 November aims to limit the rise of the average global temperature to 2 or 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era levels.

At the current rate of global emissions, and even at rates reduced by the Paris Agreement commitments, global warming will far exceed this limit, and thus the world faces potentially catastrophic effects to the global environment, food supplies and also human health.

Thus, air pollution ranks as the biggest threat to both human health and the environment.  Reducing this pollution should therefore be at the top of the global agenda as well as national agendas.

Outdoor Air Pollution

At the end of September, the WHO for the first time published country-by-country details about the extent of outdoor air pollution and the deaths associated with it.

The study shows that 3 million premature deaths worldwide were linked to ambient or outdoor air pollution in 2012.   Of this, 88% of the deaths were in developing countries and two out of three occurred in the Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific regions.

Two countries alone accounted for more than half of the total deaths — China with 1.03 million and India with 621,138.

Other high-numbered countries include Russia (140,851), Indonesia (61,792), Ukraine (54,507), Egypt (43,531), Nigeria (46,750), Pakistan (59,241), United States (38,043), Bangladesh (37,449), Turkey (32,668), Japan (30,790) the Philippines (28,696), Vietnam (27,340), Poland  (26,589), Iran (26,267), Brazil (26,241) and Germany (26,160).

Most of the deaths attributable to outdoor air pollution were caused by non-communicable diseases, especially ischaemic heart diseases (36% of the total deaths), strokes (36%), lung cancer (14%), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (8%), and acute lower respiratory infections (8%).

The situation is truly pervasive: 92% of the world’s population are exposed to the dangers of unsafe air quality as they live in places that do not meet the WHO health standard for outdoor air quality.

The world as a whole has an annual median exposure to outdoor mean annual concentration of PM2.5 of 39  microgram per cubic metre.  This is four times above the WHO’s guideline limit of 10 microgram per cubic metre for PM2.5.

The regions with the highest outdoor air pollution rates are Eastern Mediterranean high-income countries (91 microgram per cubic metre of PM2.5), Eastern Mediterranean low and middle income countries (55), Southeast Asia (55), Western Pacific low and middle income countries (49) and Africa (32).

The situation is truly pervasive: 92% of the world’s population are exposed to the dangers of unsafe air quality as they live in places that do not meet the WHO health standard for outdoor air quality.
Countries with high incidence of outdoor air pollution include Saudi Arabia (108 microgram per cubic metre of PM2.5), Qatar (103), Egypt (93), Kuwait (75), Bangladesh (84), Cameroon (65), Mauritania (65), United Arab Emirates (64), India (62), Libya (61), Pakistan (60), Bahrain (60) and China (54).

The PM2.5 level is the annual median concentration of particulate matter of a diameter less than 2.5 micrometres.  PM2.5 includes very fine (and thus the most damaging) particles of pollutants such as sulphate, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, black carbon and mineral dust, which penetrate and lodge deep inside the lungs and in the cardiovascular system, posing the greatest health risks of developing cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and lung cancer.

Air quality is normally measured in terms of daily or annual mean concentrations of PM10 or PM2.5 particles (with diameter of 10 or 2.5 micrograms) per cubic metre of air volume.

(The WHO guidelines for particulate matter (PM) outdoor pollution is an annual mean of 10 microgram per cubic meter for particles below the size of 2.5 microns in diameter, and 20 microgram per cubic metre for particles below 10 microns in size.)

The world also suffered 84.9 million years of life lost in 2012, attributable to outdoor air pollution, according to the WHO report.   Years of life lost is a measure of the extent of premature death compared to the normal expected life span.

Of the total years of life lost, 26% was due to lung cancer, 17% to stroke, 17% to acute respiratory disease, 16% to ischaemic heart disease and 8% to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The WHO report “Ambient air pollution: a global assessment of exposure and burden of disease” was based on satellite data, air transport models and ground station monitors for more than 3000 rural and urban locations.

The study does not include indoor or household air pollution, which may be even more dangerous than outdoor air pollution.

Indoor Air Pollution

Worldwide, 4.3 million people die annually from indoor air pollution, mainly from stroke (34%), ischaemic heart disease (26%), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (22%), pneumonia (12%) and lung cancer (6%).

The main form of the deadly household pollution is the use of solid fuels for cooking and heating.  Nearly 3 billion poor people rely on wood, animal dung, charcoal, crop wastes and coal which are burned in highly polluting simple stoves or open fires.

The resulting pollution, which includes small soot particles that penetrate deep into the lungs, especially affects women and children who spend a lot of time near the kitchen or hearth.

In poorly ventilated homes, indoor smoke can be 100 times higher than the acceptable levels for fine particles, according to WHO.   The use of kerosene lamps for lighting also exposes the families to very high levels of fine particles.

The emissions of black carbon and methane from the stoves also contribute to outdoor air pollution and increase climate change as both are powerful Greenhouse Gases.

The WHO has new indoor air quality guidelines for household fuel combustion and recommendations on types of fuels and technologies to protect health, in addition to guidelines on specific indoor pollutants.  It will also do a study of indoor pollution and when the figures are published they will reveal the full problems caused by air pollution.

Excerpt:

Volunteers taking on fires at Garung village in Pulang Pisau district, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Credit: Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Indonesia

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Oct 10 2015 (IPS)

A regional agreement on managing transboundary haze caused by fires raging in Indonesia’s forests and peatlands appears all but buried in the embers of frustration of its neighbouring countries.

Nearby Singapore and Malaysia, apart from eastern Indonesia, have been hardest hit by the haze, which has been sending air pollution indices soaring to unhealthy levels for more than a month now. In recent days, the winds have blown the haze to southern Thailand as well.

In parts of Southeast Asia, a pall of grey hangs over the skies from morning until dusk, and scenes of residents walking around with masks have become common.

Over the past month or so, schools have been closed at some point, flights delayed or outdoor activities cancelled or limited, with warnings about the risks to children and the elderly, as countries asked Indonesia, with whom they are members in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to address the burning of forests and land in eastern Indonesia.

After months of digging in its heels and saying it can manage on its own, the Indonesian government was quoted as saying this week it believes foreign help would be needed to put out the fires.

“This has proven quite a challenge for us, so we see it as a necessity to work together with countries that have the available resources to extinguish the fires,” foreign ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said on Oct. 8. He said Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno LP Marsud, had talked to Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, China and Australia “to discuss cooperation initiatives to overcome fire hotspots.”

But in these discussions about the fires there has hardly been any mention of the 1997 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, a legally binding agreement among the 10 member countries of the organisation. These are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

In truth, activists say, they did not have much hope in the ASEAN haze agreement and ASEAN’s ability – or will – to hold its members to its own commitments.

“The agreement is said to be legally binding, but ASEAN has no court to try offenders,” said Nur Hidayati, head of the advocacy department of the Indonesian Forum for Environment, known by its Indonesian acronym WALHI. She added that the haze accord would likely meet the same fate as the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, which activists see as weak.

Yet this year would have been an opportunity to show the teeth of the haze agreement, which ASEAN has long held up as an example of successful regional cooperation. The haze agreement was the world’s first regional arrangement that binds a group of states to tackle transboundary pollution from land and forest fires.

After years of resistance, Indonesia – whose inability to control the fires for nearly two decades has been an irritant in its ties with its neighbours – finally ratified the haze agreement in September 2014 and became legally bound by it. That is 12 years after Indonesia signed it with other ASEAN countries in 2002, a fact that has raised doubts about ASEAN’s ability to enforce its own decisions.

ASEAN countries are also moving toward deeper economic integration and launching the ASEAN Community in December 2015, but addressing transboundary tensions continue to challenge the 48-year-old organisation.

“If the most powerful three members of ASEAN (Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia) are not able to address a recurring and predictable problem (haze), what hope does the region have for economic integration with the ASEAN Economic Community that is going to be finalized end of this year?” asked a September commentary in the Jakarta Post newspaper by Joseph Cherian of the Centre for Asset Management Research and Investments, Jack Loo of Think Business and Ang Swee Hoon of the National University of Singapore Business School.

Singapore and Malaysia have repeatedly offered assistance to put out the raging fires, but Indonesia’s officials until recently said they could manage on their own.

“For the time being, we are only thinking of exhausting all of our internal resources before seeking external assistance,” J S George Lantu, director of ASEAN functional cooperation of the Indonesian foreign ministry said in an interview earlier in October. “We really appreciate their offers of help, but as a sovereign state we don’t want to seek to external help without trying hard enough to put out the fires. We can handle the fires ourselves,” the diplomat said.

But Indonesia is showing “complete disregard for our people, and their own,” Singapore Foreign Minister K Shanmugan told the British Broadcasting Corporation earlier in October.

The head of the environment division of the Jakarta-based ASEAN secretariat, which oversees the implementation of the ASEAN haze agreement, said Indonesia’s responses to the fires were in line with the accord. “Obviously, Indonesia can deal with the fires with its own resources,” division head Ampai Harakunarak said. “All member states are standing by, ready to receive requests from Indonesia.”

The accord aims to “prevent and monitor transboundary haze pollution as a result of land and/or forest fires which should be mitigated, through concerted national efforts and intensified regional and international cooperation.” It requires parties to “cooperate in developing and implementing measures to prevent and monitor transboundary haze pollutions as a result of land and/or forest fires” and “to control sources of fires.”

In truth, “Indonesia ratified the agreement under strong protest from Singapore and Malaysia over haze pollution. It (the ratification) was more as a political gesture than a statement of intent,” said WALHI’s Hidayati.

Significantly, Article 12.2 of the agreement says that external assistance “can only be employed at the request of and with the consent of the requesting party, or when offered by another party or parties, with the consent of the receiving party.”

President Joko Widodo had instructed government agencies to handle the fires in peatlands and forest being cleared by plantations for products like palm oil or paper. Foreign companies run many of them, prompting Singapore’s National Environmental Agency to name five companies with Indonesian concessions suspected to be contributing to the haze.

The Singapore Environment Council and Consumers Association of Singapore have urged consumers to use only products of companies that do not use burning practices in Indonesia.

Satellite images show that 70 per cent of hotspots in Sumatera and Borneo islands in Indonesia are in local plantations. Some 1.7 million hectares of land, more than a third of which are on peatland in Sumatra and Kalimantan, have been burned, Widodo said.

Clearly, Indonesia has a lot of cleaning up to do of the concessions it gives to plantation companies and enforcing of local laws, critics say.

Land and/or forest fires have plagued Indonesia annually over the past 18 years due to unprecedented expansion of pulp and paper companies and oil palm plantations and their conversion into easy-to-burn peatlands, according to WALHI.

“By nature, tropical rain forests are impossible to burn due to high humidity. However, when trees are felled and a monoculture system is introduced in oil palm and rubber plantations or forest estates, their humidity disappears and they become vulnerable to fires,” Hidayati said.

Government officials say they have frozen some oil palm and forest concessions, adding that they have fined some companies and that others are awaiting trial. “Previously, we only charged individuals or corporates violating the 2009 environmental law in criminal and civil courts. Since January 2015, however, we also impose administrative sanctions on them by either freezing or revoking their concessions,” said Muhammad Yunus, director of the criminal law enforcement division of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

But the government must review all forest and plantation concessions to determine whether companies can handle fires, Hidayati said. “A fire that breaks out in a plantation or forest estate should been seen as a concession holder’s inability to manage the land and thus serve as a ground to revoke the concession, regardless who sets it or whether or not it’s deliberate.”

Untung Suprapto, head of the land and forest fire control sub-directorate of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, said his office is drafting a regulation that would require plantation and forest concession holders to have own firefighter teams, trucks and equipment.
(End)

Excerpt:

The Quibú River, running through the El Náutico neighbourhood in Havana, is always full of garbage. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 26 2015 (IPS)

Pollution is likely to be the most pressing global health issue in the coming years without effective prevention and clean-up efforts, experts say.

Air, water and soil pollution already kills nearly nine million people a year and cripples the health of more than 200 million people worldwide. Far more people die from pollution than from malaria and HIV/AIDS combined.One study found newborn babies are contaminated with an average of 212 different chemicals.

Development and rising pollution levels remain closely linked, as clearly evidenced in China and India. However, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a major opportunity to curb pollution and turn economies around the world towards clean and green development pathways.

“The key to development and improving the health of everyone requires new, clean approaches to economic development,” said Fernando Lugris, ambassador and director general of political affairs with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay.

“You can’t ignore the global impact of toxic chemicals in the SDGs,” Lugris told IPS.

At least 143,000 man-made chemicals have been registered, with the majority untested for potential health impacts. In addition, the world generates more than 400,000 tonnes of hazardous waste every year, writes Julian Cribb in “Poisoned Planet: How constant exposure to man-made chemicals is putting your life at risk”.

Fresh snow at the top of Mount Everest is too polluted to drink. One study found newborn babies are contaminated with an average of 212 different chemicals, Cribb has said.

The SDGs will be a new, universal set of goals, targets and indicators all countries are expected to use to frame their agendas and political policies from 2016 to 2030. These largely expand on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in place between 2000-2015 which were focused on poor countries.

Although not all of the MDGs have been achieved, they were crucial in focusing development aid and policies and a highly visible yardstick to measure international efforts.

The 17 proposed SDGs include targets to end poverty, eliminate hunger, attain healthy lives, provide quality education, attain gender equality and reduce inequalities. SDG 3 to “Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages” has a specific pollution reduction target:  “by 2030 substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water, and soil pollution and contamination”.

“The target is great but we are troubled by the currently proposed indicator,” said Richard Fuller of Pure Earth, an NGO formerly known as the Blacksmith Institute, which helps to clean up toxic waste sites in the poorest countries.

Pure Earth is also part of the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP).

Indicators in the SDGs are tools or methods to measure the progress in achieving the target. Having the right indicators are the key to knowing if the goal has been achieved, Fuller told IPS.

However, the only current indicator is to measure outdoor air pollution levels in urban areas. “There is nothing at this point on water or soil or indoor air pollution,” he said.

However, there is time to change that. The SDGs won’t be approved until the U.N. General Assembly  Sep. 25-27. The U.N. Statistical Commission that is preparing indicators for all 17 SDGs and the 169 targets has said it can’t complete its work until March 2016.

The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) along with UNEP, Sweden, Germany, Uruguay have proposed a more comprehensive set of indicators based on measures of death and disability under the “Global Burden of Disease” methodology.

Despite the well-understood reality that exposure to pollution has serious impacts on health, it can be difficult to quantify.  The World Health Organization and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation have developed a way to measure the overall health impacts of disease or pollution using disability-adjusted life years (DALY).

“This is a well-accepted metric although it will have to be enhanced because it doesn’t cover the impacts of pollution in soils yet,” said Fuller.

GAHP has proposed that the pollution reduction indicator show the current the death and disability rates from all forms of pollution as measured against a 2012 baseline established using the Global Burden of Disease methodology.

“Pollution affects everyone and everything but awareness of the impacts is low,” said Lugris.

“This is the right moment to put this issue on the centre stage,” he said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

A typical image of the kind of subdivisions that epitomise urban sprawl, Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Credit: "Rio Rancho Sprawl" by Riverrat303 - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rio_Rancho_Sprawl.jpeg#/media/File:Rio_Rancho_Sprawl.jpeg

By Kitty Stapp
NEW YORK, Mar 19 2015 (IPS)

There’s little argument about the basic facts: It’s ugly (think strip malls and big box stores). It’s not very convenient (hours spent behind the wheel to get to work). And it wreaks havoc on the natural environment (lost farmland and compromised watersheds).

So why is “urban sprawl”, the steady creep outward of cities to more rural areas and corresponding heavy reliance on cars to commute anywhere, just getting worse?"A growing portion of middle-income households want to live in more compact, multimodal communities - often called a 'walkable' or 'new urban' neighbourhood - instead of sprawl." -- Todd Litman

Experts like Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in British Columbia say it’s a matter of what planners call smart growth – or lack thereof.

“Much of the motivation for middle-class households to move from cities to suburbs was to distance themselves from lower-income households that cannot afford single-family homes and automobile transportation,” he told IPS.

“Over time, anybody who could, left, resulting in economically-disadvantaged households concentrated in urban neighbourhoods.”

The list of woes this segregation created is not short, and includes reduced agricultural and ecological productivity, increased public infrastructure and service costs, increased transport costs, traffic congestion, accidents, pollution emissions, reduced accessibility for non-drivers, and reduced public fitness and health.

In fact, a new analysis released Thursday by the New Climate Economy, the Victoria Institute, and LSE Cities finds that sprawl imposes more than 400 billion dollars in external costs and 625 billion in internal costs annually in the U.S. alone.

Poor communities get even poorer, and research shows that this concentration of poverty increases social problems like crime and drug addiction, stacking the odds against inner city children from the very start.

By contrast, says Litman, the study’s lead author, “smart growth consists of compact neighbourhoods with diverse housing and transportation options which accommodate diverse types of households – young, old, rich, poor, people with disabilities – and residents can choose the most efficient mode for each trip: walking and cycling for local errands, high quality public transit when traveling on busy urban corridors, and automobiles when they are truly optimal overall, considering all impacts.

“This type of development tends to reduce per capita land consumption, reduces per capita vehicle ownership and travel, and increases the portion of trips made by walking, cycling and public transport, which provides numerous savings and benefits compared with the same people living and working in sprawled locations,” he said.

Once considered primarily a blight of developed countries, the problem has now gone global, according to UN Habitat.

In Guadalajara, Mexico, between 1970 and 2000, the surface area of the city grew 1.5 times faster than the population. The same is true for cities in China; Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar; Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest commercial hub; and the capitals of Egypt and Mexico, Cairo and Mexico City, respectively, the agency says.

In Latin America, sprawl has wreaked serious damage on environmentally sensitive areas. These include Panama City and its surrounding Canal Zone, Caracas and its adjacent coastline, San José de Costa Rica and its mountainous area, and São Paulo and its water basins.

“For more than half a century, most countries have experienced rapid urban growth and increased use of motor vehicles,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted in the Global Report on Human Settlements 2013. “This has led to urban sprawl and even higher demand for motorized travel with a range of environmental, social and economic consequences.

“Urban transport is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and a cause of ill-health due to air and noise pollution. The traffic congestion created by unsustainable transportation systems is responsible for significant economic and productivity costs for commuters and goods transporters.”

Reversing this trend now is critical, since projections show that between 1950 and 2050, the human population will quadruple and shift from 80 percent rural to nearly 80 percent urban.

Typical urban densities today range from 5-20 residents per hectare in North America, 20-100 residents per hectare in Europe, and more than 100 residents per hectare in many Asian cities.

One major challenge, Litman says, is the common perception that cities are inefficient and dangerous, when in fact “in many ways they are actually more efficient and safer than suburban communities, and they become more efficient and safer as more middle-class households move into urban neighbourhoods.”

In addition, zoning codes and development policies often discourage urban development and favour sprawl, and transportation policies excessively favour investments in car travel.

“For example, most jurisdictions devote far more road space and funding to automobile transportation than to walking, cycling and public transit, and impose minimum parking requirements on developers which result in massive subsidies for motorists, and it is difficult to shift those resources to alternative modes even if they are more cost effective overall. Resource efficient modes – walking, cycling and public transit – get little respect!”

The good news, he said, is that “a growing portion of middle-income households want to live in more compact, multimodal communities – often called a ‘walkable’ or ‘new urban’ neighbourhood – instead of sprawl. They are willing to accept a smaller house and they want to drive less and rely more on walking, cycling and pubic transit, but they can only do so if zoning codes and development policies change to support that.”

As a positive example, he said, many jurisdictions have ‘complete streets’ policies which recognise that public roads should be designed to service diverse users and uses, including walking, cycling, automobile, public transit, plus adjacent businesses and residents, so planning should account for the needs of pedestrians, cyclists and sidewalk café patron, not just motorists.

“Many cities are doing well on some [projects and policies] but not others. For example, Los Angeles is improving walking, cycling and public transit, but doing poorly in allowing compact infill development. Vancouver has great density near downtown but needs to allow more density in other areas. Portland and Seattle have great cycling facilities, but could have more bus lanes.

“Virtually no city is implementing all of the policy reforms that I think are justified based on economic efficiency and social equity principles,” Litman concluded.

“For example, even relatively progressive cities restrict development densities and require minimum parking for new development, few cities have programs to both increase affordable housing supply and improve livability – e.g., building more local parks – in accessible neighbourhoods, and only a few cities use efficient road tolls or parking fees to control congestion. There is more to be done!”

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

Vehicle ownership in India is projected to hit 400 million by 2040 from the current 170 million, which could prompt a five-fold increase in poisonous gases emitted by cars and trucks. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Feb 25 2015 (IPS)

Like many others of her age, 15-year-old Aastha Sharma, a Class 10 student at a private school in India’s capital, New Delhi, loves being outdoors, going for walks with her friends and enjoying an occasional ice-cream. But the young girl can’t indulge in any of these activities.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a lung disorder likely caused by Delhi’s heavily polluted air, has severely cramped the girl’s lifestyle, confining her mostly to her home.

An estimated 1.5 million people die annually in India due to indoor and outdoor air pollution.
For the past three years, Sharma’s life has been a whirligig of doctors’ prescriptions, missed social outings and a restricted diet that does not include most of her favourite foods. Along with books and a lunchbox, she also packs a nebulizer in her satchel daily to ward off the wheezing attacks that she has now come to dread.

“I’m sick of the endless do’s and don’ts I have to follow. When will I be able to lead a free life?” the teen wonders.

Many other youngsters in Delhi are asking the very same question as they grapple with the effects of rampant air pollution in this city of 18 million, believed to be world’s most polluted.

Particulate matter: a deadly matter

Greenpeace India, an environmental NGO, recently released findings of its air quality monitoring survey highlighting how poor the air was inside five prominent schools in the capital.

“Air pollution levels inside Delhi’s schools are alarmingly high and children are consistently breathing bad air. The new government needs to acknowledge the severity of air pollution in the city,” said Aishwarya Madineni, a campaigner with Greenpeace.

Another study conducted in 2014, which monitored 11,628 school-going children from 36 schools in Delhi in different seasons, found that every third child in the city had reduced lung function because of particulate pollution.

In a report submitted last year to the Supreme Court, the country’s Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority urged the apex court to order all schools in Delhi to shut down on days when air pollution levels posed a threat to public health.

Studies by the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) point out that when children are exposed to particulate matter – a complex mixture of acids (nitrates and sulfates), organic chemicals, metals, and soil or dust particles – of 2.5 micrometers, it can trigger a raft of deadly respiratory illnesses.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified particulate matter pollution as carcinogenic to humans in 2013 and designated it as a “leading environmental cause of cancer deaths.”

“Apart from mucous membranes and nasal cavities, air pollution also severely irritates eyes and skin. Exposure to high levels of pollution can lead to serious health [issues] in the long run,” warns Dr. Abha Sood, a senior consultant oncologist at the New Delhi-based Max Hospital.

Mothers’ exposure to pollution for prolonged periods, adds the specialist, can lead to malformation of organs in newborns.

“[Particulate Matter] of less than 10 micrometers in diameter (PM 10) is particularly insidious as it gets lodged deep inside the lungs and penetrates the bloodstream, heightening a person’s vulnerability to cancer and heart disease,” she explains.

A national crisis

India’s high levels of air pollution, ranked by the WHO as being among the worst in the world, are adversely impacting the life spans of its citizens, reducing most Indian lives by over three years, says a study by economists from the Universities of Chicago, Harvard and Yale.

Over half of India’s population – roughly 660 million people – live in areas where fine particulate matter pollution is above India’s standards for what is considered safe, said the study.

If India reverses this trend to meet its air standards, this demographic would gain about 3.2 years in their expected life spans, according to the study. In other words, cleaner air would save 2.1 billion life-years, it said.

Furthermore, India has the distinction of recording the world’s highest death rate from chronic respiratory diseases, and more deaths from asthma than any other nation, according to the WHO. The health organisation also claims that India is home to 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities.

An estimated 1.5 million people die annually in India due to indoor and outdoor air pollution, which also contributes to both chronic and acute heart disease, the leading cause of death in the country.

In a report submitted to the Supreme Court in December 2014, the country’s Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority called for increasing the tax on diesel cars, and banning all private vehicles on high air pollution days.

The report also advised that cars older than 15 years be taken off the city’s roads and air purifiers installed at crowded markets; it also called for a crackdown on the burning of trash.

However, the implementation of these measures has been patchy at best, say health activists. Worse, vehicle ownership in India is projected to hit 400 million by 2040 from the current 170 million, says a joint study by the Energy and Resources Institute at the University of California, San Diego, and the California Air Resources Board.

This could result in a health crisis – a three-fold increase in PM 2.5 levels and a five-fold increase in poisonous, highly reactive gases emitted by cars and trucks, the study predicted.

The economic cost of pollution is already proving to be a heavy burden for Asia’s third largest economy. A 2013 World Bank Report highlighted how pollution and other environmental challenges costs India 80 billion dollars a year, nearly six percent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

About 23 percent of child mortality and 2.5 percent of all adult deaths in the country can be attributed to environmental degradation, the study further stated.

Coal-based power: adding fuel to the fire

Air pollution is now the fifth-leading cause of death in India. Between 2000 and 2010, the annual number of premature deaths linked to air pollution across India shot up six-fold to 620,000, according to the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), an advocacy group in New Delhi.

Another CSE study out this week has sounded alarm bells over air pollution, particularly from coal-based power plants. The two-year comprehensive environmental audit, conducted on 47 thermal power plants owned by the Centre, state governments and private players, has found that Indian thermal power plants were among the most inefficient in the world, on an average operating at 60 to 70 percent of their installed capacity.

The coal-based power plants were also found to have carbon dioxide emissions that were 14 percent higher than similar plants in China. Also, 76 percent of the plants were unable to meet the targets for ulitisation of ‘fly ash‘, imposed by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF).

With the government showing little interest in formulating a cohesive action plan – involving all stakeholders – for tackling the many-headed hydra of air pollution, it looks like Sharma and her nebulizer will be inseparable for a while.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Remediation crews clean up some of the worst contaminated homes in Dong Mai, Vietnam. Credit: Blacksmith Institute for a Pure Earth

By Kitty Stapp
NEW YORK, Jan 27 2015 (IPS)

The village of Dong Mai in Vietnam’s agricultural heartland had a serious problem.

To boost their meager incomes, its residents – former artisans who once produced and sold bronze casts – had taken to cannibalizing old car and truck lead-acid batteries and smelting them by hand in their own backyards. As a result, the 2,600 people living there had some of the highest blood lead levels ever recorded."Concretely: We know how to change the situation because we have done it." -- Stephan Robinson

Dong Mai’s water and soil had become terribly contaminated — 32-36 times higher than the acceptable limits. People were getting sick, including children. One home assessed with an X-ray Florescence (XRF) analyser had lead levels 50 times the higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standard.

Local government knew of the problem, but the cost of cleaning it up – expected to run into the millions – was daunting. Then, a collaboration with the Blacksmith Institute for a Pure Earth found ways to remediate the lead for much less: about 20 dollars a person.

Once major remedial work was completed, in February 2014, lead levels in the population fell by nearly a third in six months.

“Political will takes time to build,” Rich Fuller, Blacksmith’s president, told IPS. “Governments need solid data on the scope of problems, and how to solve them. Most governments are just starting to build their teams for pollution, and those NGOs that provide support, rather than criticism, have really been a huge help.”

Together with Green Cross Switzerland and the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP), the Blacksmith Institute released a report Tuesday highlighting cleanup success stories like Dong Mai’s.

Top Ten Countries Turning the Corner on Toxic Pollution notes that pollution kills more than 8.9 million people around the world each year, most of them children, and the vast majority — 8.4 million — in low- and middle-income countries.

To put that figure in perspective, it is 35 percent more than tobacco-related deaths, almost three times more deaths than malaria and 14 times more deaths than HIV/AIDS.

Women in Senegal didn’t know their toxic jobs were poisoning themselves and their families. Credit: Blacksmith Institute for a Pure Earth

“Contrary to popular belief, many of the worst pollution problems are not caused by multinational companies but by poorly regulated small-scale operations like artisanal mining, small industrial estates or abandoned factories,” Stephan Robinson of Green Cross Switzerland told IPS.

“However, high-income countries are indirectly contributing by their demand for commodities and consumer goods to the issue as many of these small-scale operations produce the raw or precursor products,” he added. “They thus support many of these smaller industries, adding to the severity of pollution problems in low-income countries.”

Lead, the culprit in Dong Mai, is especially devastating for children. It can damage the brain and nervous system, cause developmental delays, and in cases of extreme exposure, result in death. Children also tend to have higher exposures because they play in dirt and put their hands and other objects in their mouths.

The economic toll of pollutants on poor and middle income countries is high: the costs of air pollution alone range between six and 12 percent of GDP.

Previous Blacksmith reports had focused on the 10 worst toxic hotspots, but this year, the groups chose to look at practical, replicable solutions that don’t require a vast amount of resources to implement.

“There is so much to do,” Fuller said. “Only a few countries have started down the path. We wanted to give them credit, and have them be examples for expanding work on pollution in other countries.”

In the case of Dong Mai, mobilising the active participation of villagers and local officials was key.

Instead of removing the contamined soil and carting it off to landfills, the backyards were capped with sand, a layer of geotextiles, 20 centimetres of compacted clean soil, bricks, and finally, concrete on top, safely sealing away the lead.

After an educational campaign, 50 villagers took on the task of remediating their own yards in this way. What could have cost about 10 million dollars was accomplished for 60,000.

“GAHP members are encouraged to help their neighbours,” Fuller said. “Often, a success in one country can translate into a project in another.  This is certainly true of lead poisoning and e-waste. The GAHP model is collaborative between international agencies, and between countries, all helping each other work out how to solve these awful problems.”

The other success stories in the report were led by Ghana, Senegal, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Indonesia, Philippines, the Former Soviet Union and Kyrgyzstan.

In Thiaroye Sur Mer, Senegal, lead battery recycling was replaced with profitable hydroponic gardens.

In Mexico City, a contaminated oil refinery was turned into an urban park with one million visitors a year.

In Agbogbloshie, Ghana, informal e-waste recycling by burning electronic scrap that released toxins is now performed safely by machines.

Bicentennial Park is located on the site of a former oil refinery in Azcapotzalco, Mexico. Credit: vladimix, Creative Commons, Some Rights Reserved

“We worked hard to find solutions that would work for the local recyclers,” Kira Traore, Blacksmith’s programme director for Africa, says in the report. “Simply banning burning wouldn’t help them earn an income. Rather, forbidding burning in Agbogbloshie might push the practice elsewhere, thus expanding the pollution and the number of people affected by it.”

Experts note that local sources of pollution – particularly heavy metals like mercury and arsenic – are often very mobile and can have health impacts thousands of kilometres away.

“Mercury from unsafe artisanal gold mining and coal plants travels the globe and is found in our fish which, e.g., we eat as sushi in London,” Robinson said. “DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) is found in the body fat of the inhabitants of Greenland, though there was never agriculture in Greenland.

“Contaminated air from China and elsewhere can be measured in other countries. Radionuclides from nuclear disasters, like Chernobyl, have reached other countries in most of Europe,” he noted.

In essence, rich countries have not only a moral obligation but a vested interest in helping poorer nations address pollution.

“Western nations have had success in cleaning up their toxic and legacy pollution over the last 40 years and can transfer technology and know-how to low- and middle-income countries today. Concretely: We know how to change the situation because we have done it,” he said.

“Pollution problems can only be solved by organisations joining forces and bringing in what they are best at…These are stories proving we are on the right track, and moving forward. But we need to do more with industrialisation in full swing around the world.”

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

A worker walks past Casino Lisbo, one of the largest casinos in Macau, China. Credit: Damon Garrett/CC-BY-2.0

By Martin Murphy
HONG KONG, Jul 8 2014 (IPS)

Macau’s gaming boom just keeps on giving. Gambling revenues soared to a new high of 45 billion dollars last year, a whopping 18.6 percent rise over 2012 and the city’s sixth straight year of record earnings.

Casinos in this former Portuguese colony, which returned to China in 1999, now earn seven times more than they do in Las Vegas.

Casino jobs, which pay 30 to 40 percent more than other sectors, employ nearly a quarter of the labour force. Add in casino-related positions like retailing and hospitality and about half the working population in this city of 600,000 is connected to the gaming industry. The result is an enviable unemployment rate of 1.8 percent.

So why not let the good times roll?

Macau’s mono-economy of gaming is creating a generation of workers steeped in the monotonous work of baccarat dealing and spinning roulette wheels, but with few of the transferable skills needed in today’s globalised knowledge economy.

With the economy and workforce increasingly dependent on Chinese gamblers from the mainland, however, there is little pressure for change —a situation that may suit Beijing just fine.

Some hit the jackpot, others pay the price

It should surprise no one that the city’s gaming boom, which produces 50 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), has spawned a dark side. Prostitution, organised crime and money laundering are daily affairs.

Not so obvious, though, are the multiple stress lines now tearing at a traditional society trying to cope with uncontrolled urban development, loss of green space, rising local gambling addiction and a general deterioration in the quality of life.

For the average resident, the challenges created by the gaming boom now outweigh its advantages. Poor transportation, worsening air pollution from casino shuttles serving the city’s 29 million visitors and soaring property prices are just a few of gaming’s by-products.
“Macau is a complete illusion of prosperity, because what we are building is only casinos, rooms, and some shops with famous brands.” -- legislator Jose Coutinho

Macau’s small and medium-sized businesses, about 95 percent of its enterprises, also pay a price in rising rents and loss of both staff and customers to the casinos. Adding to this are higher crime rates across almost every category.

Despite all the downsides, Macau’s casino executives and investors, including the big U.S. gaming houses, see unlimited possibilities for further growth and expansion. Their main complaint? A shortage of skilled labour.

With more mega casinos scheduled to open in 2016, Macau will need at least an additional 75,000 casino and hospitality workers, officials say.

Given that the city’s small and medium-sized businesses already struggle to compete against higher-paying casinos for limited talent, Macau will have to import not only casino workers, but also professionals from every walk of life.

But neither Macau nor the Chinese government seems to have a plan to deal with the city’s soaring labour deficit, nor is either willing to slam the breaks on what has become a runaway train of unregulated growth.

Worse, Macau is turning its back on policies meant to prepare its future generations for a more globalised, knowledge-driven economy. If trends continue, Macau risks morphing into a society of know-nothings —one whose future could be devoid of educated and skilled professionals, its pool of workers increasingly drawn to easy money to be made in the often mind-numbing work on casino floors.

Every few months, new reports present dire warnings. In December last year, one survey showed that nearly half of businesses polled “found difficulties in recruiting IT professionals” and predicted the shortage “could further worsen.”

Last April, an industry report cited the lack of accountancy professionals, with “only fractional increases” since 2007. Another complained of the city’s “lack of engineers and related professions.” All this points to a society at the breaking point, one that is mortgaging its future generations for short-term gains.

Even Macau’s lawmakers now complain that the boom has been building castles in the sand. Last year, legislator Jose Coutinho told the media, “Macau is a complete illusion of prosperity, because what we are building is only casinos, rooms and some shops with famous brands.”

But he and other critics hold a minority view in a legislature where 12 of the 33 members are indirectly elected by industry bodies and another seven are appointed by Macau’s Beijing-selected chief executive.

Betting it all on gaming

While Macau officials pay occasional lip service to the need to rebalance the economy and have floated a number of proposals, none so far have the transformative effect needed to set the city off in new directions.

One of the most talked about proposals recommends that Macau capture more of the region’s “meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions,” or MICE. But this has been slow to take off and relies disproportionately on the gaming sector.

For example, Macau’s biggest trade show is the Global Gaming Expo Asia. A plan to develop nearby Hengqin Island as a free trade zone will also do little to help the majority of Macau’s small businesses, given its emphasis on large-scale projects.

But the main obstacle to a more sustainable economic model is that Macau continues to grow fat on Chinese gambling, and Chinese leaders still see Macau as an important outlet for the country’s wealthy and middle class. The result is that no one in authority is even contemplating the day when China’s economy slows, the gamblers stop coming, and the boom ends, even though history has shown that the bigger the boom in a mono-economy, the greater the potential for a crash.

While China says it wants to see Macau rebalance its economy, Beijing’s reluctance to impose policy prescriptions or offer inducements to help it diversify is not surprising.

That’s because Macau may be right where Beijing wants it and China’s other peripheral regions to be—societies increasingly dependent on the mainland for their prosperity and therefore less willing to make annoying demands for such things as democracy and greater autonomy.

(END)

Martin Murphy is a former U.S. diplomat. He was head of the Economic-Political Section at the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong and Macau from 2009-2012. He can be found at www.hongkongreporting.com. 

Read the original version of this article on Foreign Policy In Focus.

Florencio de Souza Bezerra points with his foot to a mound of dangerously inflammable charcoal dust on a roadside in Piquiá de Baixo. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
PIQUIÁ DE BAIXO, Brazil, Feb 10 2014 (IPS)

“My nephew was eight years old when he stepped in the ‘munha’ [charcoal dust] and burned his legs up to the knees,” said Angelita Alves de Oliveira from a corner of Brazil’s Amazonia that has become a deadly hazard for local people.

Treatment in faraway hospitals did not save the boy’s life, because “his blood had become toxic, the doctor said,” said Oliveira, 61, who has been working as a teacher for the last 30 years. “My sister was never the same after she lost her youngest child.”

Oliveira’s own husband suffered from similar burns, as the scars on his legs show."An examination a year ago showed shadows on my lungs, and the doctor accused me of being a long-time smoker, but I have never touched a cigarette.” -- Angelita Alves de Oliveira

“Munha” is pulverised charcoal waste left over from the production of pig-iron, an intermediate in steel production. It has made the village of Piquiá de Baixo, in the Brazil’s eastern Amazon region, a tragic case study in industrial pollution.

Piquiá is a rural village in Açailandia municipality in the state of Maranhão, which grew out of workers’ camps set up in 1958 to build the Belém-Brasilia highway, a major axis of development and integration in the centre-north of Brazil, which was responsible for several environmental and social disasters.

The railway that opened in 1985 to transport iron ore from the huge mining province of Carajás sealed the fate of Açailandia as a logistics crossroads and steel industry hub. Piquiá de Baizo was hemmed in by five pig-iron plants, the railway and large mining storehouses.

Making charcoal to feed the steel furnaces was added to traditional cattle ranching, and transformed Açailandia into a focal point for deforestation and slave labour.

These blights have receded in the face of state persecution and various pressures. But pollution in Piquiá has worsened, according to the testimonies of people interviewed by IPS.

Pulverised charcoal waste is still a menace. Dryness makes it inflammable at the lightest touch. This is what cost Oliveira’s nephew his life in 1993, when few people knew how lethal the black dust was.

A family smiles for the camera from the shade of a tree. The highway separates them from the pig-iron plants that are making like impossible in their neighbourhood. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

People took heed and accidents have become less frequent, but they have not been eradicated. A child of seven was burned to the waist in 1999 and died three weeks later.

“I have seen cows incinerated,” said Florencio de Souza Bezerra, who used to be a small-scale farmer and is now an active member of the Piquiá Residents Community Association. He has lived in Piquiá for 10 years with his nine children and two grandchildren, in a big wooden house with a large yard.

Mounds of munha can be seen in the streets where the steel plant trucks pass, and in at least one unroofed materials storehouse that IPS was able to enter unrestricted.

But the most frequent complaint of local people is the air pollution. “Just over a year ago a girl died from iron dust in her lungs and cancer, after 15 days in intensive care,” said Bezerra.

In the village square, he points out the houses where residents have died of respiratory illnesses.

Oliveira said “an examination a year ago showed shadows on my lungs, and the doctor accused me of being a long-time smoker, but I have never touched a cigarette.” She wants to “give life and hope” to her grandchildren, who live here “exposed to pollution 24 hours a day.”

“I have lived a long time, but my grandchildren haven’t,” said Oliveira. Her house is next to the Gusa Nordeste plant, one of the five industrial units that produce pig-iron.

The situation worsened “two years ago,” she said, when the company started producing cement. Now it spreads clouds of black dust that cover everything in seconds and, some mornings, make her house invisible from the main road, only 30 metres away.

For the company this has spelled progress, as they can use blast furnace slag as an input for cement production, avoiding bulky waste and providing the local construction market with a product that formerly had to be hauled in from a long way away.

Gusa Nordeste proclaims that it is being responsible for the environment because it uses munha as a fuel, saving granulated charcoal, and utilises gas derived from pig-iron production to generate all its electrical energy needs.

But the truth, recognised by the justice system, several authorities and the industry itself, is that air, water and soil pollution have made it impossible for the people of Piquiá de Baixo to continue to live where they have been for over four decades.

A proposal to resettle the 312 families living in Piquiá de Baixo on 38 hectares of land six kilometres from its present location has been approved by the justice system and the municipal council.

In December, justice authorities ordered the expropriation of the land and valued it at the equivalent of 450,000 dollars, but the owner is demanding four times that sum, so the residents of Piquiá are still waiting.

The community has come up with its own urban project, including the designs for the houses, the school, the square, shops and churches, said Antonio Soffientini, a member of Justice on the Rails, a network of dozens of organisations supporting those affected by the Carajás mining region.

Eroded street and dilapidated houses in Piquiá de Baixo. Residents have long waited for relocation on land expropriated by the justice system. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

In the mountain range of Serra dos Carajás, the giant mining company Vale extracts close to 110 million tonnes of iron ore a year. The ore is transported by rail 892 kilometres to the port of Ponta da Madeira in São Luis, the capital of Maranhão, to be exported.

A small proportion of the iron ore remains in Açailandia. As the supplier to the local pig-iron industry, Vale has direct responsibility for the pollution, according to Justice on the Rails.

“Vale could stop supplying ore until the industry instals filters and puts an end to the dreadful situation in Piquiá,” said Soffientini, an Italian member of the Catholic order of Comboni missionaries.

That would create an unemployment crisis in Açailandia, said Zenaldo Oliveira, Vale’s global director of logistics operations.

This steelmaking hub has already experienced a decline in activity since 2008. The 6,000 jobs it provided then have fallen to 3,500 today, according to Jarles Adelino, the president of the Açailandia metalworkers union.

The union leader complained of the high price charged by Vale for its iron ore, which amounts to half the cost of pig-iron production.

However, the declining activity is not apparent in the city of Açailandia, with its hotels filled to capacity and other signs of prosperity. Several plants in the surrounding area offer temporary work, said Adelino, and each position at a pig-iron plant generates 10 indirect jobs.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

A neighbourhood in southern Mexico City, where visibility is limited because of the smog. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 23 2013 (IPS)

Mexican cities with populations of more than 500,000 face serious obstacles in monitoring air quality and reducing air pollution, but as of July local authorities will be required to do both, and to submit mandatory reports on their efforts to the federal government.

The new requirements that will soon enter into effect were approved by the Mexican government last year, in an attempt to tackle the urgent task of reducing levels of air pollution in urban areas, yet many local governments are still ill equipped to comply with them.

According to experts consulted by Tierramérica*, the main difficulties stem from a lack of financial resources as well as the human resources needed for the adequate operation of the monitoring and measurement instruments involved.

Existing monitoring networks “do not work as well as one would hope,” said Ricardo Torres, a researcher from the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences at the public National Autonomous University of Mexico.

“There has been no support from state governments, who do not view environmental health and air pollution as priorities,” Torres told Tierramérica.

Half of Mexico’s 118 million inhabitants are distributed across 32 cities with populations of 500,000 or more, and a number of these cities have no environmental monitoring systems in place.

The country’s large cities are facing growing problems due to the high levels of ozone, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and coarse particulate matter (PM10) generated by fossil fuel consumption and industrial activities such as hydrocarbon processing and cement production. These lead to serious impacts on both the environment and human health.

“You can’t improve something that hasn’t been measured. The only way to improve the situation is by knowing the conditions in each city. But the monitoring system is not regulated, and the main obstacles in this regard are economic,” said Gerardo Moncada, an air pollution specialist from the non-governmental organisation El Poder del Consumidor (Consumer Power).

Mexico has 28 networks for the measurement of air quality, but only 18 of them provide valid and reliable information, Moncada told Tierramérica

The National Air Quality Information System encompasses more than 80 air quality monitoring stations, but its data must be validated to comply with the regulations.

“It is crucial to monitor air quality, but there is a lack of commitment to doing it well, due to the shortages in equipment and trained personnel,” said activist Agustín Martínez of Bicitekas, a civil society organisation devoted to promoting bicycle use.

According to the World Health Organization, air pollution causes the premature death of more than 14,700 Mexicans a year.

Since 2009, the federal government has invested some 15 million dollars in the installation of pollution monitoring and measurement stations. While the equipment used in the stations costs roughly 38,000 dollars, the largest expenditure goes towards the operation and maintenance of these instruments.

In response to the serious threat posed by air pollution, eight Mexican civil society organisations, including El Poder del Consumidor and Bicitekas, joined forces to propose a plan called “Hacia ciudades saludables y competitivas: Moviéndose por un aire limpio” (Towards Health Cities: Moving for clean cities), which includes a series of concrete measures for improving air quality in the country.

These include the updating of regulations on clean fuels, polluting emissions and other aspects of air pollution; the elimination of fuel subsidies; the reduction of motor vehicle use in metropolitan areas; the improvement of urban public transportation; and the strengthening of air quality monitoring programmes.

The National Institute of Statistics and Geography, a government agency, estimates the environmental costs of air pollution at more than 40.5 billion dollars.

“There is a need for inter-municipal coordination, because there are significant traffic flows in metropolitan areas. This is a macro problem, which means that strategies to control the problem should not be local,” said Torres.

Torres is preparing to publish the findings of a research study on the flow of air pollutants from sources like industry and transportation through the area comprised of the federal capital, Mexico City, and the neighbouring states of Mexico, Morelos, Hidalgo and Puebla. He is also conducting similar research on the effects of this pollution on the region’s vegetation.

So far this year, Mexico City has issued at least six air pollution alerts, during which people are advised to refrain from physical activities outdoors. This number of alerts is not common in the country’s other big cities, however.

“Reporting needs to be done in real time, hour by hour, for each pollutant, and a historical record needs to be kept. And obviously, efforts to measure and reduce air pollution must be undertaken simultaneously,” stressed Moncada.

The governments of the states in central Mexico, around Mexico City, have already created the Metropolitan Environmental Commission to address issues like those mentioned above and to work towards joint solutions. Similar entities need to be established in other large urban areas, the experts say.

The report “Air Quality in Latin America: An Overview”, published in March and updated in May by the U.S.-based Clean Air Institute, stresses the need for more effective monitoring and measurement of air pollution levels in the region.

“There are no standardized monitoring techniques or data collection or averaging protocols across the region. There is also limited evidence for quality control or assurance activities ensuring optimum data quality,” adds the report, which analysed the levels of five different pollutants in 42 major Latin American cities.

The report’s recommendations for the region include setting local air quality goals based on national air quality standards, ensuring robust air quality monitoring, and establishing detailed emissions inventories.

“We need this issue to be on the public agenda and to be actively discussed. The authorities now have our proposal, which could be used as a starting point,” said Martínez.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Excerpt:

The Empire State Building viewed at night. Credit: NLNY/cc by 2.0

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 19 2013 (IPS)

As usual, midtown Manhattan is packed with whisper-quiet cars and trams while thousands walk the streets listening to the birds of spring sing amongst the gleaming, grime-free skyscrapers in the crystal-clear morning air.

Welcome to New York City in April 2030.I think the public will be 100 percent behind this, if they know about it.

This is not a fantasy. It is a perfectly doable goal, said Stanford University energy expert Mark Jacobson. In fact, the entire state of New York could be powered by wind, water and sunlight based on a detailed plan Jacobson co-authored.

It’s not only doable, powering New York on green energy is “sustainable and inexpensive” and would save lives and health costs, Jacobson told IPS.

Each year, air pollution kills 4,000 people in New York State and costs the public 33 billion dollars in health costs, according to the study Jacobson co-authored with experts from all over the U.S. It will be published in the journal Energy Policy.

“Converting to wind, water and sunlight is feasible, will stabilise costs of energy and will produce jobs while reducing health and climate damage,” said Jacobson.

Under the plan, 40 percent of New York State’s energy would come from local wind power, 38 percent from local solar and the remainder from a combination of hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal and wave energy.

All vehicles would run on battery-electric power and/or hydrogen fuel cells. Heating and cooling for homes and businesses would come from air- and ground-source heat pumps, geothermal heat pumps, heat exchangers and backup electric resistance heaters – replacing natural gas and oil. Water heaters would be powered by the same heat pumps while solar hot water preheaters would provide hot water for homes.

High temperatures for industrial processes would be obtained with electricity and hydrogen combustion.

All of this can be accomplished with existing technology. The latest electric cars can travel 300 kilometres between charges, said Jacobson.

The significant costs of building renewable energy power plants, buying vehicles, heat pumps and other equipment are more than made up over time through savings in health costs and elimination of fuel costs by not having to buy any coal, oil or gas. The break-even point would be between 10 and 15 years, the study estimates.

The study also found that because green electricity is more efficient than burning fuels, New York’s end-use power demand would be 37 percent lower.

“Electric vehicles are five times more energy efficient than gasoline-powered cars and buses,” Jacobson said.

Electric vehicles convert 90 percent of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels while conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 20-25 percent, while the rest is lost as heat and noise. Coal and oil-fired electric power plants average just 33 percent efficiency and are major sources of air pollution and global warming.

Pollution costs from burning fossil fuels have largely been underestimated, according to new research. Canadian researchers found that the health cost to the public of driving a car or truck is 300 to 800 dollars per year per vehicle.

The public’s conception and official costs of pollution may be drastically undervalued, said Amir Hakami at Carleton University in Ottawa.

“While reducing emissions from vehicles and power plants is costly, not reducing emissions also costs money. Our research suggests that ignoring pollution will cost much more in the long term,” said Hakami in a statement.

When the sun doesn’t shine or wind doesn’t blow, there are many ways to match energy supply with demand, the study found. All electrical grids rely on a number of power sources and fossil-fuelled and nuclear power plants are taken off grid sometimes for months and years for repairs. Geographically-dispersed renewables can be networked with hydroelectric power to fill in remaining gaps. Energy can be also be stored in various ways including as heat, water pumped uphill, and batteries.

Improvements in energy efficiency would make New York’s conversion to 100 percent green energy easier, faster and less costly, Jacobson acknowledged.

Governments have invested very little in improving energy efficiency. The majority of research investment is devoted to generating more energy, said Charlie Wilson, a scientist with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenberg, Austria.

Creating a low-cost, high efficiency refrigerator would do much to reduce energy and reduce carbon emissions, Wilson said.

“There are also enormous energy savings potential in buildings,” Wilson told IPS.

But politicians don’t think building retrofits are sexy so public money goes into new power plants. The market won’t drive retrofits because the cost of energy is too low in most countries, he said.

Changing this won’t be easy. By far the world’s biggest corporations are the fossil fuel energy and power producers, who have enormous political influence, he said.

Leadership is needed to create a clean and healthy, pollution-free New York City by 2030, said Jacobson. “I think the public will be 100 percent behind this, if they know about it.”

“The economics of this plan make sense,” said Anthony Ingraffea, a Cornell engineering professor and a co-author of the study. “Now it is up to the political sphere.”

In a megacity like the Mexican capital, plagued by air pollution and traffic jams, carsharing and carpooling initiatives offer obvious advantages in addition to the economic benefits enjoyed by users.

Jimena Pardo’s company even offers electric cars that can be recharged in four hours. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Two of the most popular new initiatives of this kind are Aventones and Carrot, small companies founded by young recent university graduates.

Aventones takes its name from “aventón”, the Spanish word for hitching a lift. The company’s creation was spurred by “the excess of traffic and the inefficient use of cars,” in the Mexican capital, said Ignacio Cordero, a 28-year-old industrial engineer and graduate of the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA), a Jesuit university in Mexico City.

“The idea is to promote a culture of shared car use,” he told IPS, which in this case is achieved through carpooling.

Cordero joined forces with Cristina Palacios, a business administration graduate from UIA, and Alberto Padilla, an industrial engineer trained at the Monterrey Institute of Technology, to create the company in 2010.

Their services are offered to “communities of trust” – companies, universities and government institutions – with an average of 200 or 250 people, who are matched up through an online system that searches for compatible routes, travel times and empty seats in cars. The service’s users not only share a vehicle – they also share the ride together.

The client organisation is charged a fee of 8,000 dollars a year, which includes training courses.

The software used was created by the company’s founders. It is currently utilised by 5,752 users and 27 clients – 23 in Mexico and four in Chile, where the company began operating in January.

Carpooling has become well established in countries like Germany, Spain, Canada and the United States, but is just beginning to catch on in Latin America. Similar services are being developed in Argentina, Chile and Brazil.

Carsharing is another means of multi-user car transport, popular in Germany, Spain, Canada and the United States and now offered by Carrot in Mexico, Zazcar in Brazil and SigoCar in Costa Rica.

“There is a growing trend of providing more options for getting around. This has a significant positive impact on the environment and fosters multi-modal transportation,” said industrial engineer Jimena Pardo, 28, a UIA graduate, who co-founded Carrot in 2012 with Diego Solórzano, a graduate in actuarial science from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

The company, which is affiliated with the international CarSharing Association, offers its clients 40 vehicles, including three electric cars, and has already attracted 1,600 users.

Clients register through a website and pay a fee in accordance with how frequently they need the use of a car, Pardo told IPS. Occasional users pay around 23 dollars annually and seven dollars an hour, plus 23 cents of a dollar for each kilometre travelled.

A frequent driver pays around eight dollars a month, five dollars an hour, and 23 cents per kilometre. Users can pick up a car at one station and leave it at another when they are finished.

According to Carrot, each one of its shared vehicles keeps 20 private cars off the roads.

These new means of transportation are one of the most visible forms of “collaborative consumption”, a movement aimed at increasing the use and shelf life of consumer goods and resources by promoting their use by numerous different people, reducing the time that they sit unused but continue to generate expenses.

These solutions are more than welcome in a city like the Mexican capital and its metropolitan area, which have a combined population of 20.4 million. According to the Centre for Sustainable Transport, the inhabitants of this megacity carry out a total of 49 million trips daily, 53 percent on public transport and 17 percent in private vehicles.

The Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley estimated that as of October 2012, carsharing was operating in 27 countries and five continents, with an estimated 1,788,000 members sharing over 43,550 vehicles, and was planned in seven additional countries worldwide.

The “Propuesta de sistema de vehículos compartidos basado en un sistema de información geográfica” (Proposal for a carsharing system based on a geographic information system), co-authored in 2011 by Luis Guadarrama, Daniel Santiesteban and Javier García at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, states that “the expected benefits of a carsharing system include a reduction in the use of individual vehicles and the number of these vehicles in circulation.”

“Our goal is for carsharing to become a habit, and for our service to be a social experience in every way,” said Cordero.

Aventones states that it has prevented the emission of 115 tons of carbon dioxide and saved 750,015 kilometres and 10,586 hours in car travel and 71,430 litres of gasoline.

Carsharing systems “can be replicated in medium-sized and large cities that have urban transportation, a high population density and a mix of residential and office areas,” said Pardo, whose company employs nine people and operates stations in the largest Mexico City neighbourhoods.

Both initiatives are self-financed and have ambitious plans for the future.

Aventones, which employs a staff of 10, hopes to begin operations this year in Bogotá and attract 25,000 new users, thanks to financing provided by its new partner, Venture Institute. Its software team is developing an open application based on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Carrot, which has also partnered up with Venture Institute, plans to begin operations in Toluca and Puebla, cities near the Mexican capital, raise its membership to between 3,000 and 5,000 users, expand its fleet to 100 vehicles, and open up more stations in different neighbourhoods of the city.

Both organisations also hope to forge closer ties with the leftist local government of Mexico City, which is promoting the Metrobús (a bus rapid transit system using dedicated lanes), a public bike sharing system, and an electric taxi programme in the city’s historic centre.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the World Bank.

The Coatzacoalcos river basin in southern Mexico is so polluted that you can sense the mercury in the air, feel it and breathe it, and the population living in the area is only too aware of its undesirable neighbours: refineries and petrochemical complexes that emit this toxic element into the air and water.

“People are concerned about the situation and want solutions. We are talking to the communities in order to take strong action,” activist Isaúl Rodríguez, head of the Tatexco Ecological Producers Association (APETAT), told IPS from the affected area.

This NGO has some 2,500 members whose livelihoods are affected by their location close to the petrochemical plants and refineries established in the basin, in the southeastern state of Veracruz.

Their plight illustrates the problems associated with emission and management of mercury faced by Mexico, just as the fifth and final round of negotiations for an International Treaty on Mercury is being held Jan. 14-18 in Geneva. This will be the first legally binding global treaty to limit mercury emissions.

A study released on Jan. 9 about the petrochemical industry in the Coatzacoalcos river basin, which has implications in the context of ongoing international treaty negotiations, was eloquent in stating reasons for concern.

The average mercury level in the samples of human hair from the Coatzacoalcos basin was 1.7 times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reference dose of one part per million.

The results “make us worry about the problem we face. People wonder whether they are going to die, or what will happen if they seek medical treatment. It’s a difficult social and economic problem,” Lorenzo Bozada, head of Ecología y Desarrollo Sostenible en Coatzacoalcos (Ecology and Sustainable Development in Coatzacoalcos), an NGO, told IPS.

Bozada took part in taking samples and writing the research report, together with two other independent organisations: the Mexican Centre for Analysis and Action on Toxins and their Alternatives (CAATA) and the Arnika Association of the Czech Republic.

The report is part of the Global Fish and Community Mercury Monitoring Project, coordinated by the International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) and the U.S. Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI).

The study covered 25 municipalities, with a population of close to two million people and economic activities that include fishing, livestock raising and cultivating maize, squash and fruit.

The state General Lázaro Cárdenas refinery, which processes 285,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, is located at Minatitlán, on the banks of the Coatzacoalcos river, while in the nearby city of Coatzacoalcos, on the same river, is the state Pajaritos petrochemical complex, in whose grounds a private chlor-alkali plant operates, using mercury in its manufacturing process.

Exposure to mercury, which is naturally present in air, soil and water, can harm the nervous, immune and digestive systems, the skin, lungs, kidneys and eyes. It is also harmful to foetal neurological development.

Bacteria and other microorganisms convert mercury to methylmercury, which can accumulate in the food chain, especially in fish.

The toxic element enters soil and water through the use of fertilisers, small scale artisanal gold mining, the use of mercury thermometers, and energy saving light bulbs.

The case of the Coatzacoalcos river basin does not appear to be unique in the country, although there are not enough data to be sure.

A 2012 study, “Patterns of Global Seafood Mercury Concentrations and their Relationship with Human Health,” conducted by David Evers, Madeline Turnquist and David Bucks, all researchers at the BRI, indicates that the highest mercury concentrations are found in the Gulfs of California and Mexico, on the border with the United States.

“Mexico’s policies are inadequate. There is a need for a more systematic programme on the presence of mercury at the national level, and for more work on critical areas, like this river basin,” the head of CAATA, Fernando Bejarano, told IPS before travelling to Geneva for the final negotiations of the treaty, which has been promoted since 2009 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Mercury Watch, an international alliance, says that small scale artisanal gold mining emitted 7.5 tonnes of mercury in Mexico in 2010, when the country exported 134.24 tonnes of mercury and imported 13.89 tonnes, almost all from the United States.

The Mexican Mercury Market Report for 2011, prepared by José Castro for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America, estimates there are nearly 27 million tonnes of mercury waste, accumulated in mines and the chlor-alkali industry.

Trade in mercury is a challenge for Mexico because the European Union has banned exports since 2011, while the United States has prohibited exports of elemental mercury effective Jan. 1, 2013, making it difficult for Mexico to acquire the metal.

Mexican policy has focused on studying domestic issues related to mercury and withdrawing its use from hospitals, as shown in the letter sent to the UNEP in August 2010, when Mexico joined the Mercury Products Partnership. But it does not address recycling.

In another letter sent on Aug. 31 by the Directorate General for Global Issues of the Office of the Undersecretary for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, to the UNEP Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, the Mexican government stated that the minimum limits for reporting emissions and transfers of mercury and its compounds are one and five kilogrammes a year, respectively.

“PEMEX (the Mexican state oil company) must take responsibility for reducing and monitoring mercury emissions, and it has a historic environmental debt towards the people who live in this region. The Health Secretariat (ministry) should carry out a clinical and epidemiological assessment of the impacts and take steps to reduce exposure,” Bozada said.

The IPEN network is critical of the draft treaty on the table because it does not demand clean-up of contaminated sites, payment for bio-remediation or compensation for accident victims. It also absolves the oil and gas sector of responsibilities.

“Mexico should achieve a higher commitment in these sectors,” said CAATA’s Bejarano about the treaty, which, if all goes as planned, will be signed in October by the 128 states participating in the negotiations.

But for producers like Rodríguez, the head of APETAT, the treaty is a pipe dream and there are few other options. “To begin with (there) could be a ban fishing, so that fishers are not exposed to mercury, and then it is essential that the polluting companies help the people,” he said.

(END)

Air monitoring equipment near the beach on Grand Isle, Louisiana. Credit: US EPA photo by Eric Vance

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
ATLANTA, Georgia, Dec 19 2012 (IPS)

With Barack Obama’s re-election last month as U.S. president, key environmental protections escaped a likely Republican chopping block, and new regulations are expected when his second term begins in January.

Environmentalists say the situation would be much different had former governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, the Republican nominee, been elected president. Romney had sworn to roll back many, if not all, of the regulations enacted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during Obama’s first term.

Asked which of those EPA rules Romney would have likely overturned, Jenna Garland, associate press secretary for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, responded: “All of them.”

Romney’s attitude towards the environment was perhaps epitomised during his speech accepting the nomination at the Republican National Convention in August 2012.

Romney mocked Obama for wanting to address climate change warming: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans. And to heal the planet,” Romney said, pausing to allow laughter from the audience.

“My promise is to help you and your family,” he said.

On Dec. 14, the EPA strengthened the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for fine particles, or soot pollution, to 12 microgrammes per cubic metre. The previous limit, which had been in place since 1997, was 15 microgrammes per cubic metre.

Sources of soot pollution include power plants, diesel trucks, and buses.

Stephanie Stuckey Benfield, executive director of the non-profit group GreenLaw, considers the rule to be the first environmental victory of Obama’s reelection.

“They (fine particles) are deadly. Any amount is bad. But this is a good step in the right direction,” Benfield told IPS.

Upon request by IPS, the EPA prepared a document outlining the agency’s major accomplishments for clean air and water covering the years 2009 to 2012.

“If Romney had been elected, he was on record during the campaign saying he would roll back critical clean air and clean water protections, and politicise public health by giving Congress more power over Clean Air and Clean Water Act standards. That would be one of the most damaging things we have seen for public health and environment in decades,” Garland said.

“For instance, certain (Republican) Congressional leaders have gone after… the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. Just recently, this is the first time the federal government has regulated one of the most potent neurotoxins known to man… Congressional leaders and Mitt Romney wanted to limit the EPA’s ability to regulate neurotoxins like mercury, even though courts including the Supreme Court have upheld the EPA’s right and duty to regulate,” she said.

The EPA proposed its new carbon pollution standard for new coal and gas plants on Apr. 13, 2012.

That rule is currently undergoing a one-year public comment period, and is expected to go into effect on or around Apr. 13, 2013. That too would have likely been cancelled under a Romney administration.

“This is really important because carbon pollution threatens our climate, it does threaten our health and well-being. This is a critical step, if we’re going to address carbon pollution head-on instead of always responding. It means coal plants will no longer have a blank cheque,” Garland said.

“Mitt Romney denies that human activity contributes to climate destruction,” she added.

Activists also pointed to Obama’s selection of Lisa Jackson as EPA administrator as a crucial part of his governance as it relates to the environment.

“A lot of it has to do with who gets appointed to the EPA, the overall tone over there. The overall climate of the EPA is definitely a lot more supportive of pro-environment issues,” Benfield said.

“Appointing the EPA administrator is pretty political. Mitt Romney could have easily appointed someone to the EPA who does not take seriously human health, and could have instructed that administrator not to enforce” various recent EPA standards, Garland said.

But Obama has his shortcomings on the environment too, said the activists.

“We certainly have our problems with the Obama Department of Energy supporting nuclear and so-called clean coal projects that aren’t doing so well,” Garland said, noting that, still, “under the Obama administration we have seen tremendous growth of renewable energy.”

Obama has supported so-called clean coal, something that environmental advocates warn does not exist; in addition to nuclear power.

Garland also criticised Obama for shelving a proposed ozone standard during his first term because, she believes, it was found to be too political. However, the ozone standard is something that she hopes will be revisited now that he was won reelection.

“We would like for Obama to be a lot stronger on these issues,” Benfield said.

“You have to look at the dynamics. He’s not perfect, a lot of environmentalists would like to see him be a lot stronger. A lot of us are hoping, it’s his second term and he’s not concerned about being elected, that he’ll be proactive, and now he’s looking at leaving his legacy. A second term is a time to reflect on his legacy. What does he want his legacy to be? And climate change has to be part of that, I’m hopeful,” Benfield said.

Sierra Club anticipates that several new EPA rules will come out over the next four years, including a NAAQS rule for sulfur dioxide; a carbon pollution rule for existing pollution sources; and a Clean Water Act standard to address toxic discharge from power plants in waterways.

An anti-fracking demonstration in Manhattan, New York City organized by CREDO Action and New Yorkers Against Fracking. Credit: CREDO: Cuomo Policy Summit/cc by 2.0

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 25 2012 (IPS)

The planet can be cooled a whopping 0.5 degrees C with fast action to reduce air pollution from coal-fired power plants, gas fracking, diesel trucks and biomass burning, recent studies show.

All it would take is a few regulations and a few tens of millions of dollars over the next two decades to bring dramatic reductions in emissions of short-lived planet-heating pollutants like methane, black carbon or soot and smog.

These are dangerous air pollutants and reductions could save millions of lives, according to studies by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization.

“This is one thing that can be done to slow the very disturbing rapid meltdown of the Arctic sea ice,” said Ellen Baum, senior scientist at the Clean Air Task Force, an international NGO working to reduce air pollution.

Last week, the annual summer melt of sea ice shocked scientists by falling 18 percent below the previous record low. Summer ice this year is half what it was 30 years ago and is disrupting weather patterns in the Northern hemisphere.

The vast Greenland ice sheet also experienced a record melt this year, nearly doubling the previous record melt said Marco Tedesco, an associate professor at the City College of New York and world-renowned specialist on the Greenland ice sheet.

Every summer, the surface of Greenland melts but this year’s melt was off the charts. Parts of Greenland ice continued to melt for 40 to 50 days longer than normal, Tedesco told IPS.

This process is being driven by warmer air temperatures, a drop in snowfall and the fact that much of the ice is no longer white but covered with black soot particles, he said.

Those soot particles come from burning diesel and biomass thousands of kilometres away, in Europe, Asia and North America. Snow and ice reflect much of the sun’s heat energy but the combination of the black soot and meltwater ponds, more of that heat is absorbed by the ice, leading to increased melting.

“It is very troubling what is happening in the Arctic,” Rafe Pomerance, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for environment and development, said at a press conference.

A new international group, the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, was created in February this year to spearhead efforts in all countries to take action on these air pollutants. A package of 16 measures to reduce emissions of black carbon and methane have been identified and countries are now working together to find ways to act on those measures.

Last week, the Coalition met in Ghana to work together with African nations to identify ways to reduce emissions of short-lived climate and air pollutants from the African continent. Reducing emissions of methane, black carbon and tropospheric ozone would have “substantial and immediate health, crop yield and other environmental benefits for Africa” in addition to reducing warming, the Coalition reported.

Hi-efficiency cook stoves are a simple, low-cost technology to reduce emissions of soot. In the transport sector, cleaner-burning diesel engines, black carbon filters and low-sulphur fuels can be used. Preventing oil and gas flaring in the fossil fuel sector as well as the reduction of methane emissions are other needed actions.

Much of this has been known for several years. Developed nations have taken action on air pollution, particularly by shifting to cleaner-burning diesel engines. However, there is still much to be done. Europe’s air pollution remains dangerously high, warns a new report released Monday. Despite regulations, tiny particles of soot are reducing European life expectancy by as much as two years, according to the European Environmental Agency study.

In the United States, it has been a “slow process to put these measures into practice”, said Baum. Last year, after decades of inaction, the U.S. finally enacted new regulations to reduce emissions and improve efficiency of motor vehicles. The slow progress “has a lot to with the lack of political will”, she said.

The recent boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is “taking us in the opposite direction” regarding emission reductions, said Erika Rosenthal of the U.S.-based environmental NGO Earthjustice.

“Fracking has made the U.S. one of the top 10 methane-emitting countries,” Rosenthal told IPS.

The process of drilling for natural gas using the fracking method of pumping large amounts of water and chemicals underground to access shale gas deposits results in large emissions of methane, several studies have shown. Hundreds of thousands of shale gas wells are currently being “fracked” in the United States and Canada. These leak methane, a highly potent global warming gas

Shale gas production results in 40 to 60 percent more global warming emissions than conventional gas, Robert Howarth of Cornell University in New York State previously told IPS. Howarth has done two recent studies estimating the amount of methane escaping and concluded that natural gas from fracking was worse overall in terms of climate heating than burning coal.

Methane has 105 times the warming potential of CO2 over a 20-year time frame, after which it rapidly loses its warming potential. If large amounts of methane are released through fracking – as seems likely with hundreds of thousands of new wells forecast in the next two decades – Howarth says global temperatures could rocket upward from 0.8C currently to 1.8C in 15 to 35 years.

“We’d better have a zero tolerance for methane emissions from fracking,” said Baum.

However, even if there were mandatory requirements – presently there are none – it is difficult to enforce when governments at state and federal are cutting budgets and staff, said Baum.