Asia faces growing health threat from auto boom
Asia faces growing health threat from auto boom
BANGKOK (AP): Pollution caused by the rapid rise in motor vehicles on Asia's roads poses a growing health threat that already causes thousands of deaths in major cities every year, an expert said on Tuesday.
Population and economic growth put the region at heightened risk in the decades ahead, Michael Walsh, an international consultant, told a conference on vehicle air pollution in Asia that began on Tuesday in Bangkok.
Pollutants from vehicle emissions include carbon monoxide, ozone, oxides of nitrogen given off by diesel fuel and micro- particulates. Cancer and heart and respiratory disease are among the associated health problems.
South and East Asia are forecast to have the greatest increase in vehicles of any region in the world in the next 15 to 20 years, which could offset progress made so far in limiting the harmful effects of vehicle emissions and use of unleaded fuel, Walsh said.
He singled out India, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Thailand as having made strides to combat the problem. The black spot in the region is its third-most populous nation, Indonesia.
"In Indonesia, most of the fuel still is leaded. This is just direct poison to the children of the country," Walsh told the conference.
About 90 percent of gasoline in the world is now unleaded. He said air pollution is thought to be behind the high rate of respiratory diseases in Bangkok and thousands of premature deaths every year in Delhi, India.
But Asian countries could "leapfrog" the progress achieved in Europe and the United States over the past five decades in limiting vehicle emissions by adopting state of the art technologies and addressing the threat posed by various pollutants simultaneously, he said.
"This problem can, if not be solved, then certainly be dramatically reduced," Walsh said.
More than 100 government officials, environmental scientists and industry representatives from 13 countries are attending the three-day conference, to consider clear-air measures for the region's cities.
The conference is sponsored by the Belgium-based Association for Emissions Control by Catalyst and the U.S.-based Manufacturers of Emission Controls Association.
According to the World Health Organization, some 460,000 people are dying prematurely worldwide from exposure to air pollution, much of it coming from vehicles.
In Asia, the number of motorcycles, cars, trucks and buses has risen dramatically -- by as much as 600 percent in some cities -- during the past two decades, according to the conference organizers. Among the biggest polluters are two-stroke motorcycles that make up almost half of vehicles in many cities.
Supat Wangwongwatana, the Thai government's director of air quality and noise management, said the number of vehicles in Bangkok had risen from 600,000 in 1980 to 3,870,000 by the end of 1997.
However, he said scrutiny of fuel specifications in the past 12 years by authorities had led to a "drastic improvement in air quality in Bangkok, especially for lead."