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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
20May 2015
W
HILE global pollution
crises, from climate
change to plastics in the
oceans, are showing no
signs of improvement,
the worst effects, we in the ‘developed
world’ are reassured to believe, are clus-
tered in poorer countries and distant
ecosystems.
One of the many environmental para-
doxes is that, while global ecological
indexes are in free-fall, the more pros-
perous parts of the world have never
had it so good. The outsourcing of heavy
industry from much of Europe and the
US to the Far East over the last two dec-
ades has been a win-win for the West.
The cost of manufactured goods plum-
meted thanks to the vast new pools of
cheap labour, leading to the last decade
and a half turning into the greatest
shopping spree in human history, for us.
While we shopped, they dropped.
China today burns nearly half the
world’s coal. Air pollution is now so
severe that Chinese scientists have
described its effects as being akin to a
nuclear winter, with photosynthesis in
plants being disrupted – potentially
wreaking havoc on China’s food supply.
A report from the Shanghai Acad-
emy of Social Sciences stated that that
Beijing’s pollution levels made the city
“almost uninhabitable for human
beings”.
While the climate-altering green-
house gases spewing from thousands of
new smokestacks across Asia are
demonstrably as much a threat to Ire-
land as they are to China or India, it
remains alarmingly easy for our politi-
cians and policy-makers to deride the
concentrations of an invisible, odour-
less gas like carbon dioxide (CO) while
instead tilting their serious antagonism,
Don Quixote-style, at ‘unsightly’
windmills.
And while the silent apocalypse being
fomented by the unrestrained burning
of fossil fuels draws near, we can at least
console ourselves that it’s a problem for
‘other’ people (those divided from us
either by geography or by time) to deal
with.
This narrow view was shattered by a
recent report from the World Health
Organisation (Europe) which took an
in-depth look at the costs to Europe
right now from air pollution. The word
they used to summarise their own con-
clusions was “staggering”. It’s hardly an
overstatement. The WHO study attrib-
uted some , deaths in Europe
every year directly to air pollution; it
calculated the annual cost of illness and
death from air pollution at some $.tn
(yes, trillion).
This enormous sum is the equivalent
of some % of the GDP of the entire
European Union. “Curbing the health
effects of air pollution pays dividends.
The evidence we have provides decision-
makers across the whole of government
with a compelling reason to act”,
according to Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO
Regional Director for Europe. “If differ-
ent sectors come together on this, we
not only save more lives but also achieve
results that are worth astounding
amounts of money”.
The economic cost of deaths accounts
for over US$.tn per annum. Another
% is added to this to account for the
cost of diseases caused by air pollution,
resulting in the total of around
US$.tn. The economic cost of deaths
and diseases due to air pollution can,
according to the WHO, be valued in
terms of the amount societies are will-
ing to pay to avoid these deaths and
diseases with necessary interventions.
In these calculations, “a value is
attached to each death and disease,
independent of the age of the person
and which varies according to the
national economic context”.
More than nine in ten people living in
the European Region are exposed to
annual levels of outdoor fine-particulate
matter that are in excess of the WHO’s
air-quality guidelines. This translates
into , premature deaths in
from heart and respiratory dis-
eases and strokes, as well as lung
cancers. Indoor air pollution accounted
for another , premature deaths,
five times more in poorer than in high-
er-income European countries.
A related WHO study tallied that one
in four Europeans falls ill or dies prema-
turely from environmental pollution. So
much for this simply being a far-away
problem affecting people and places we
know and care little about.
The law of unintended consequences
applies to attempts at curbing pollution.
Many European governments, including
the Fianna Fáil/Green coalition, moved
to introduce reforms in motor taxation
to favour vehicles that produced lower
CO emissions. While this undoubtedly
600,000
deaths in
Europe arise
every year
directly to air
pollution and
the annual cost
of illness and
death from air
pollution is
$1.6tn
“
NEWS Environment
A spree before
the apocalypse,
Minister Kelly
Hidden environmental costs ravage the West as much
as obvious ones do the developing world.
By John Gibbons
Dublin or Dengzhou?
May 2015 21
nudged car-makers into producing
cleaner engines, the single biggest
switch was from petrol to diesel
combustion.
The massive shift to diesel on Irish
roads has happened rapidly. This seem-
ingly ‘environmentally friendly’ move
(diesel engines produce around % less
CO per kilometre travelled than petrol
equivalents) generates a nasty sting in
the tailpipe. Diesel engines emit ten
times the amount of fine particles and up
to twice the amount of nitrogen dioxide
(NO) of petrol. These toxins have been
linked to , deaths in
the UK each year.
A study in the medical
journal the Lancet in
implicated traffic exposure
to particulates as the single
most serious preventable
trigger of heart-attack in the general
public, and the principal cause of .%
of all attacks. Particulates are classed as
carcinogens by the WHO. Fine particu-
lates (those below . micrometers, or
more than times smaller than the
width of a single strand of hair) are par-
ticularly dangerous.
These microscopic particulates pene-
trate deep into the lungs, and into
individual alveoli, passing through cell
membranes and migrating into other
organs. Established health effects
include asthma, lung cancer, cardiovas-
cular and respiratory diseases,
premature delivery, birth defects and
premature death. Infants and children
are particularly at risk from the effects
of particulates, and these in turn are
most intense in urban areas in proxim-
ity to heavy traffic.
In April , its Supreme Court
ruled that the British government must
take urgent steps to tackle air pollution
in cities. The UK is facing
huge fines from the Euro-
pean Commission for failing
to cut levels of nitrogen
dioxide (NO).
The Supreme court
ordered the UK Department
for the Environment to draw up new
air-quality plans by the end of ,
setting out how it plans to dramatically
tackle air pollution.
According to the WHO analysis, the
cost to Ireland of air pollution is just
over $.bn annually, estimated at
around .% of Ireland’s GNP. The fig-
ures are very significantly higher in
many eastern European countries,
where the annual cost of air pollution
averages up to % of GNP.
Ireland’s Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) monitors domestic air
quality, and in it raised concerns
over levels of the cancer-causing partic-
ulates and polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons (PAH), which are pro-
duced by burning solid fuels, and ozone
which in high concentrations causes
breathing problems, damages lungs and
can trigger asthma.
The EPA noted that local air quality
was significantly diminished by burn-
ing coal or peat in the home, as well as
by the level of vehicular traffic in urban
areas. The EPA also expressed concern
about the levels of nitrogen dioxide
(NO) in the air in urban areas.
“Ireland must develop and implement
policies to reduce travel demand,
emphasising sustainable transport
modes such as cycling, walking and
public transport and improving the
efficiency of motorised transport”,
according to the EPA.
There is zero indication that the gov-
ernment or indeed the execrable
current environment minister, Alan
Kelly, has any interest whatever in curb-
ing pollution or tackling our spiralling
transport and agricultural emissions,
any more than he has in lifting a finger
on climate change.
To the contrary, the science-illiterate
Kelly appears to favour a return to
industry-friendly light-touch regulation
in housing, coupled with vague and
deliberately meaningless ‘targets’ on
emissions reduction with no mecha-
nism to actually deliver them.
We may now be witnessing a rapid
return to the cowboy building blitz of
the boom years, coupled with toothless
and useless climate legislation. Mean-
while, the new WHO data on air
pollution is a timely reminder that what
you can’t see can indeed hurt you. Right
now, people are paying with their health
and their lives for our failure to address
air pollution.
The same steps needed to tackle this
epidemic would also set us on the road
to climate stabilisation by reining in the
reckless burning of fossil fuels and rap-
idly transitioning to clean, safe
alternatives. But as long as we continue
to vote in politicians prepared to
gamble with our health as well as with
our environment, our quality of life and
our future, that prospect remains
elusive. •
The EPA noted
that local air
quality was
significantly
diminished by
burning coal
or peat in the
home, as well
as by the level
of vehicular
traffic in urban
areas
“
John Gibbons writes on
climate and environmental
issues and is online
@think_orswim
