People should take weather and geological conditions into account when trying to identify sources of air pollution, the Environmental Protection Administration said yesterday.
The statement came after National Taiwan University professor Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權) criticized a report by the agency as spreading wrong information.
On Tuesday, Cabinet spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said that the poor air quality in winter is mainly caused by pollution from China and that blaming pollution on local thermal power plants is “an improper connection.”
In a report about air pollution control measures presented to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Central Standing Committee on Wednesday by agency Deputy Minister Chan Shun-kuei (詹順貴), he said that about one-third of the nation’s air pollution consists of Chinese pollutants that are brought to Taiwan by northeastern monsoon winds in fall and winter.
Pollution from China is less influential in spring and summer, Chan Shun-kuei added.
Chan Chang-chuan in an op-ed on the Chinese-language Web site Storm Media said that to determine the influence of Chinese pollution, the number of days when the air quality index at the monitoring station in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) exceeds the “red” level should be divided by the number at the monitoring station in Pingtung County’s Chaozhou Township (潮州).
The air quality in Chaozhou is bad throughout the year, not from Chinese pollution, but because of pollutants emitted by power plants, factories and vehicles in Kaohsiung, which is north of the township, Chan Chang-chuan said.
He asked whether Chan Shun-kuei was an expert on air pollution and appealed to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), whose family is from Pingtung County, to include phasing out coal use in electricity generation and fossil fuel combustion in vehicles in the Air Pollution Control Act (空氣污染防制法).
The finding that one-third of pollution comes from abroad is based on the “community multiscale air quality modeling system,” the Department of Environmental Monitoring and Information Management said in a statement yesterday, adding that Chan Chang-chuan’s calculations were simplistic and ignored the nation’s weather.
Northeast monsoon winds bring pollutants from other countries, while the nation’s mountains reduce wind speed and keep pollutants from leaving the central and southern regions, the department added.
Reducing causes of air pollution to any single source, such as China, the Taichung Power Plant or the energy sector in general would not help curtail pollution, Chan Shun-kuei said, adding that he gave the same advice to the DPP.
Additional reporting by CNA
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