Environmentalists yesterday urged Matsu devotees to refrain from setting off firecrackers, or burning incense and joss paper ahead of an annual religious festival next month to reduce air pollution.
Campaigners gathered at Nanyao Temple (南瑤宮) in Changhua City — the first stop of the annual Dajia Matsu Pilgrimage, one of the most celebrated religious activities in Taiwan — and presented a bouquet of flowers to Changhua Mayor Chiu Chien-fu (邱建富), urging people to replace incense and firecrackers with flowers.
Environmentalists measured air pollution levels inside and outside the temple with handheld devices, and recorded concentrations of PM2.5 — particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter — of between 50 micrograms per cubic meter and 60 micrograms per cubic meter outside of the temple.
Photo: Liu Shiao-hsin, Taipei Times
However, concentrations of PM2.5 reached more than 200 micrograms per cubic meter near incense burners inside the temple, illustrating the severity of air pollution caused by incense burning.
According to Environmental Protection Administration criteria, PM2.5 levels higher than 54 micrograms per cubic meter are considered hazardous.
Changhua Medical Alliance deputy director Chen Chih-yuan (陳志遠) said during an anti-pollution campaign in Nantou’s Puli Township (埔里) last year that PM2.5 levels were about 15 micrograms per cubic meter, but the level soared to 319 micrograms per cubic meter after a local temple set off fireworks in celebration of the birthday of a god.
“Air pollution caused by religious activities can be more serious than haze in China,” Chen said.
Taiwan Healthy Air Action Alliance founder Yeh Guang-peng (葉光芃) said burning incense generates benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which can cause respiratory diseases, while particulate matter resulting from incense burning are smaller than bacteria and can easily enter the human body.
Fight for Health Women’s Group executive director Yen Shu-nu (顏淑女) said environmental protection is not in conflict with religions, and replacing ghost money with food offerings or charitable deeds has become a common trend.
“There are 91 temples in the city, but only 15 practice environmentally friendly worshiping. We called on the city office to encourage more temples to follow suit and reduce air pollution,” Yen said.
She said the group asked the city office to monitor air quality during the whole pilgrimage and to make public data collected to serve as a basis for future pollution reduction efforts.
Chiu said the office has instructed temples to reduce the number of incense burners, use fewer and thinner incense sticks and build environmentally friendly furnaces to burn ghost money.
The Changhua County Government has provided temples with electronic firecrackers to reduce the use of traditional fireworks during religious activities, Chiu added.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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