Red air-quality alerts, which signal “severe” air pollution, were issued 282 times this year as of Dec. 16, beating a target of at most 499, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
Preliminary data on the nation’s air quality from Jan. 1 to Dec. 16 showed that the agency had reached its 2015 goal of halving red air-quality alerts earlier than expected, it said.
The goal was to reduce the frequency of red alerts from 997 to 449 per year, Department of Environmental Monitoring and Information Management Director-General Chang Shuenn-chin (張順欽) said.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
The goal for this year is to see fewer than 698 red alerts, but data so far show that the goal of halving 997 was reached earlier than expected, Chang said.
A closer look at the data shows that the frequency of red alerts declined nationwide except for in northern areas, as well as Hsinchu and Miaoli, where the number slightly increased, he said.
While the percentage of days with red alerts increased in northern areas, Hsinchu and Miaoli, it dropped by 21 to 55 percent in central Taiwan, Yunlin, Chiayi and Pingtung counties, and Tainan and Kaohsiung, he said.
Central Taiwan saw the sharpest drop of 55 percent, followed by Kaohsiung and Pingtung with 42 percent falls, he said.
Yunlin, Chiayi and Tainan’s saw a 21 percent fall, he said.
Data show that PM10 — an indicator of airborne particles measuring 10 micrometers or less — only triggered red alerts in industrial areas in Yunlin’s Mailiao Township (麥寮) and Yunlin’s Taisi Township (台西), he said.
Purple alerts — the next highest level — were issued in Taisi on April 7, primarily because of pollution from abroad and dust, he said.
Mailiao reported a red alert on Oct. 27 due to dust, Chang said.
The deterioration of air quality in northern Taiwan, Hsinchu and Miaoli might be because those areas had less rain and weaker winds, Chang said, but added that more analysis was required to determine the causes.
The average concentration of PM2.5 last year was 18.3 micrograms per cubic meter and so far this year the average has decreased to 17.4 micrograms per cubic meter, the agency said, adding that it aims to lower the levels to 15 micrograms per cubic meter by 2020.
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