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Cities' Toxic Clouds a Tough Enemy |
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By Diego Cevallos*
Bogotá, Mexico City, Lima and Santiago have adopted innovative measures to fight air pollution, but the air-borne toxins continue to make thousands of people ill.
MEXICO CITY - The clouds of pollution hovering over Bogotá, Mexico City, Lima and Santiago are less dangerous than they were a decade ago, thanks to the cities' various contamination-fighting measures, but they still pose a tough problem. Thousands of urban residents become ill, and many have died, as a result of air pollution, and the near future does not bode for much improvement.
In the Mexican capital, where the authorities have been consistently combating pollution since 1984, every year 35,000 people die prematurely from diseases related to poor air quality, according to the city government's own documents.
Meanwhile, in Santiago, anti-pollution programs began in earnest in 1988, but even today the city's mortality rate rises 10 percent following days of acute air contamination, says a study sponsored by the World Bank.
And the situations in Lima and Bogotá are not any different. When there are high concentrations of air-borne particle matter in the historic downtown area of the Peruvian capital, for example, the mortality rate in the district jumps 18 percent, say the municipal authorities.
Figures from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that 2.7 to 3.0 million people die each year worldwide from causes linked to air pollution.
Furthermore, an estimated 1.1 billion people fall ill as a result of this environmental problem, which also hurts economic productivity and generates high costs for health systems.
Seventy thousand deaths could be prevented annually in developing countries if three major atmospheric contaminants were reduced to innocuous levels: carbon monoxide, particle matter, and lead, says the WHO.
That is the objective of the municipal governments in Latin America's largest cities. Nearly all launched campaigns in the 1980s to fight the problem. At first they were mostly piecemeal approaches, but have now taken the form of long-term, integral models.
In Bogotá, for example, the city authorities started a clean public transportation program known as "Transmilenio", and they certify non-polluting companies as "green" and encourage bicycle commuting.
In Mexico City, there is a proposal for building a second tier to the metropolitan areas main routes in order to alleviate traffic congestion.
But projects like Mexico's - billed as an anti-pollution measure - have come under fire from environmentalists, who say they encourage the use of individual automobiles instead of more the eco-friendly mass public transportation.
Vehicles that run on fossil fuels are considered the main source of air pollution, which has led authorities in many cities to order periodic inspections of car engines as a means to reduce the emission of contaminants. In most cases there are also restrictions on driving during periods of worst pollution, limiting circulation during certain times of the day or specific days of the week.
Thanks to such measures, there have been no "environmental emergency" days in Mexico City since 1999, and the presence of lead in the air has almost disappeared, falling 99 percent from 1988 to date.
As far as carbon monoxide, dangerous concentrations of this pollutant were recorded just 0.5 percent of the days in 2000, while in 1991 they were found 70 percent of the days.
But the levels that persist "are still unacceptable for human health" and are associated with thousands of deaths in Mexico City, admit municipal authorities in the Program to Improve Air Quality 2002-2010, or PROAIRE.
In downtown Lima, the concentration of sulfur dioxide dropped from 190 to 73 units per cubic meter in the 1999-2001 period, while that of nitrogen dioxide fell from 190 to 68.5 units, and particle matter from 300 to 201 units.
In spite of the improvements in the Peruvian capital, air pollution levels still surpass the WHO-established maximums acceptable for human health.
Santiago has seen marked improvement. Last year there was an overall 16-percent reduction in air pollution compared to that of 2000, according to official figures.
The Mexican capital and outskirts, the largest metropolitan area in the region at more than 20 million people, is the leader in many of the air pollution problems, but also in the search for solutions.
In January, the city government presented PROAIRE, a project drawn up with the participation of federal authorities, environmentalists, business leaders and representatives from other sectors, covering strategies and action plans for the next 10 years.
The future of the ambitious plan, whose budget calls for more than 900 million dollars, is still uncertain, and requires major commitments from many different sectors.
Though much of the plan lacks funding, local environmental groups consider it an excellent example of what should be done in Latin America's larger cities: long-term projects with broad participation.
Santiago appears to be seeking that route. Last year, city authorities opened for citizen debate a process to reformulate the Metropolitan Region's atmospheric pollution prevention plan.
Out of this process have come ideas like economic incentives for industry and for car owners based on "clean-up vouchers" and rewriting some of the rules for measuring specific contaminants.
In Bogotá, the city environmental department has been working to raise public awareness about the problem. Two years ago the capital instituted "day without cars", which was ratified by a citizen referendum. So far, there have been three "carless" days, with the most recent taking place Feb 1.
The Colombian capital has also actively promoted bicycles as a means of transportation, constructing a 20-km bicycle-pedestrian network of routes.
In Lima, meanwhile, anti-pollution efforts are not keeping up with environmentalists' expectations. The city authorities have yet to move beyond the diagnostic phase and isolated actions, say activists.
A recent study by the Peruvian Health Ministry's environmental health division, found that in the Callao district of Lima, the volume of lead in children's blood averaged 26.7 micrograms per deciliter, nearly triple the limit set by the WHO.
The municipal authorities of Lima, Santiago, Mexico City and Bogotá coincide in recognizing that they face a giant task in fighting air pollution, and none dare assert that they have a short-term solution to the gray clouds that continue to make people sick and claim lives.
* Also contributing to this article were IPS correspondents Alicia Sánchez (Chile), Yadira Ferrer (Colombia) and Abraham Lama (Lima).
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