The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday launched its annual showcase for soil and groundwater protection in Taipei, drawing hundreds of global delegates to learn about the agency’s efforts to prevent soil and water contamination and the nation’s pollution-monitoring technologies.
The three-day exhibition, dubbed the International Conference of Remediation and Management of Soil and Groundwater Contaminated Sites, highlights partnerships between the EPA, local precision manufacturing companies and academic experts to develop and apply new environmental protection technologies.
For example, National Taiwan University associate professor Huang Chien-fen (黃千芬), an expert on sediment surveying, is guiding the agency on how to operate a sub-bottom profiler — a machine that performs real-time data analysis on sediments to find areas with excessive levels of heavy metals.
Agency official Chang Chih-wei (張志偉) said that the device helps the EPA locate areas that need to be excavated to prevent heavy metals from being consumed by freshwater animals or tapped for irrigation and entering the food chain.
Regarding dioxin sampling, EPA Environmental Analysis Laboratory division head Chen Yuan-wu (陳元武) said the agency is collaborating with a private firm to develop a continuous centrifugal system to sample dioxins in groundwater, wastewater and drinking water from purification plants.
The machine uses filter paper and foam to extract dioxins in water samples before frozen samples undergo detailed analysis, he said.
The machine, although developed over a period of more than three years, cost about NT$500,000 (US$16,150), making it more time-saving than its predecessors and more cost-efficient than its Japanese counterparts, which cost twice as much, he said.
On managing defunct factories, agency official Sun Tung-ching (孫冬京) said plant or land owners must pass the EPA’s soil analysis before they can set up factories in other places or lease their land to other operators.
There are about 120,000 defunct plants nationwide, she said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching