The idea that pollution is only caused by industry has become a prevalent notion in Taiwan. This attitude is very different from many cities around the world that are getting their entire public on board to promote green transportation and fight urban pollution.
In 2014, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published the Air Quality and Outdoor Activity Guidance for Schools as part of their Air Quality Flag Program, with the stated goal of keeping children active.
This is the opposite of the idea in Taiwan of raising air-quality warning flags and discouraging schoolchildren from going outdoors.
The Environmental Protection Administration in Taiwan tells schools to warn students to cut down on outdoor activities when the concentration of PM2.5 — particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less — reaches 48 micrograms per cubic meter.
In contrast, the US authorities recommend raising an orange flag when the air quality index is between 100 and 150 — which means that the average PM2.5 concentration over one to three hours is between 89 and 138 micrograms per cubic meter — indicating that the air is “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” but most students can still take part in outdoor physical activities as usual.
Research by health policy expert Marko Tainio of the University of Cambridge, who recently gave a lecture in Taiwan, shows that even when the PM2.5 concentration exceeds 100 micrograms per cubic meter — which is much higher than the 71 micrograms per cubic meter point at which a purple flag, meaning “very unhealthy,” is raised in Taiwan — the health risk from air pollution starts to exceed the health benefits gained from the physical activity only after someone rides a bicycle for more than one-and-a-half hours or walks for more than 10 hours per day.
Last year, the journal Preventive Medicine published a report titled “Active transport: Exercise trumps air pollution, almost always,” written by University of South California professor Jonathan Samet, an internationally renowned authority in the field of smoking, air pollution and cancer research.
The report says that the health benefits of commuting by bicycle are almost always greater than those of driving a car, at almost any level of air pollution.
In other words, the beneficial effects of exercise are almost always greater than the negative health impact of air pollution. (Samet is one of the editors of the book Air Pollution and Cancer and I worked with him on an international research project on household secondhand smoke exposure.)
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) is to be commended for the boldness and vision she has shown over the past few years in promoting green transport. In this respect, she beats Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) hands down.
The Kaohsiung metro has received less than one-fifth of the investment given to the Taipei metro, but that has not stopped Chen’s administration from boldly proposing to ban 20-year-old two-stroke high-polluting scooters, which emit 18 times as much pollution as new scooters, by 2019, as well as working toward a world-class car-free green ecological community.
These activities have received good reviews from international professional communities concerned with green transport and livable cities.
In comparison, Ko, who inherited a more than NT$1 trillion (US$33.3 billion) metro system, has turned in a blank test paper as far as promoting green transport is concerned. The usage rate of private gasoline-powered cars in Taipei has not fallen in the slightest, even though the metropolis is blessed with the Taipei MRT and a dense bus network that has received more subsidies than anywhere else.
In the Greater Taipei area, the majority of its residents who drive cars or ride scooters are among the main culprits of air pollution, so how can they shrug off their responsibility and demand to breathe the best air in the world?
Taipei is so backward in this respect that crowded traditional markets, covered walkways and sidewalks have large numbers of gasoline-powered cars and scooters driving through them, belching fumes into the air that shoppers have to breathe, not to mention the pollution they deposit on the fresh fruit and vegetables on market stalls.
For some reason, nobody has managed to make these places into car-free pedestrian zones. Does this sound like a city that really cares about air pollution and wants to improve its air quality?
Taichung resident Tom Fleischer has made a video showing the kind of pollution caused by scooters driving through street markets, which can be viewed on YouTube.
Taiwanese do breathe air that is better than the average air quality of cities around the world, and that is something worth smiling about. However, Taiwan still lags far behind the most progressive green cities.
Former Bogota mayor Enrique Penalosa, a world-famous leader in urban green transport, once said: “An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.”
That is the goal that everyone in Taiwan should be striving for.
Wayne Gao is an assistant research fellow with Taipei Medical University’s master’s program in global health and development.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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