[quote=“dahsiung”]
According to their maps and readings, large parts of California, Utah, and New Mexico are well over the Federal standard of 12 and are listed as “moderate” (meaning over 50)[/quote]
Those areas are rural areas though. Looks like a lot of desert also.
It also looks like those areas are in the barely exceeding 50 on the index. Pretty the entire western side of Taiwan is in the never going below 50 on the index.
Yes it seems to be dust blown up mainly and strangely doesn’t cover the main cities. In fact no major city shows up on that map as moderate. Maybe things get worse in the summer but in Taiwan pollution is worse in Winter. It’s still not healthy of course whatever is the cause.
Explanation as to why the Central Valley has had the worst air pollution in the US for the last 40 years.
m.theatlanticcities.com/neighbor … alley/207/
In fact it shares a lot of similarities to Taiwan’s geography, agricultural, industrial and urban areas crammed on sides by mountains. The main cause is agriculture particularly burning of agriculture waste. Well that points back to Taiwan aswell because rice farmers here burn stalks after the harvest, a quick win that could bureaucrats could easily be implement here if they got off their fat arses.
The other major cause is an increase in motor vehicle emissions. Very similar to Taiwan.
Yup, that one really, really annoys me. And it’s not just the rice stalks - they’ll set fire to pretty much anything they can get their hands on. There’s a woman near my little plot who goes around sweeping up little fist-sized piles of leaves and burning them. Every time I go up there, there’s at least one farmer with a ginormous stinking bonfire. In fact they seem to burn more than they send to market.
Where the hell did they get this stupid idea from? Did some idiot penpusher, who read a book about rice diseases once, tell them to do it? Or do they think there’s an army of gnomes that goes around Taiwan’s central forests burning stuff to keep things “clean and tidy”? If the gov’t could simply instruct farmers about composting and mulching (the USDA has been running a modest campaign like that over the last 20 years) the burning will stop. Pathetically easy. If you just tell them “stop burning it”, they’ll say, “well, what else am I supposed to do with it?”.
They burn the leaves and waste to keep insects away, or rather to keep them from, I don’t know, being attracted to leaves and waste.
I asked my neighbors abotu this once. If we don’t burn the leaves the bugs will be terrible, they said. Actually that is true though I am sure there are better ways.
Drives me nuts. That and ghost paper burning are such no-brainers to outright ban. :loco:
And have they ever tried not doing it to see what happens?
They’re sort of right. You wouldn’t believe how many bugs you get if you leave well alone. Hundreds of amazing, different bugs. And frogs. And lizards. And grasshoppers. I saw a baby mantis the other day.
And hardly any of them are interested in your crops. The ones that are tend to get eaten by the other ones: I had a load of caterpillars appear on my peas and bai cai, but a couple of days later they’d mysteriously disappeared. Having said that, I can’t grow cauliflower or broccoli. They get completely decimated. So I plant a few, the bugs that like brassicas eat the brassicas, and all my other stuff is pretty much bug-free. Even the strawberries are untouched, which really surprised me. You don’t need to go around burning and spraying the shit out of everything. If you do that, all that happens is that you get different bugs: the ones that can cope with burning and spraying, which I imagine are a lot more virulent than the sort I’ve got.
Wankers, the lot of 'em. In my humble opinion.
My impression was that it is not the crops they are concerned about but simply being bothered by lots of bugs.
I notice they do the same with bushes/plants around trails and sitting areas. Clear everything back so visitors don’t have to be bothered by nature when they go for a walk…in nature.
The main issue in Taiwan by far agriculture wise is rice stalk burning. I’m wondering if this is the same in the Central Valley too?
Edit- good link here
sfexaminer.com/news/californ … -heartland
It seems the situation has some similarities and differences. The Central Valley has a lot of large ploughed farms including dairy farms. They also burn fuel in fireplaces. So in terms of agricultural pollution it is quite different. However they also have two major highways running North-South, and this is similar to the situation in Taiwan.
It seems the US EPA has no burn days which they implement according to weather forecasts, again a simple policy to implement. Even with that their pollution this year is the worst in 12 years and the worst in the nation.
Some great quotes from the article above, it indicates that the current monitoring system has massive gaps, and that peak numbers in a given locality really matter.
Taiwan’s industrial polluters such as refineries are not a problem in the US, which I find very interesting, the Gulf has refineries yet they don’t show up on the above Airnow map, in fact the whole East coast doesn’t show up, which is pretty amazing!
Today the pm 2.5 levels are lower in the South than they have been in recent weeks, perhaps owing to some recent rain. After reading all of the links people posted and a few I found about surrounding countries, this is obviously not a problem isolated in Taiwan. And the fact that they are now more accurately reporting these statistics (around the world and in Taiwan) shows that some bureaucrats are thinking about it and perhaps something will be done, albeit slowly. Still, unhealthy is unhealthy.
So the question remains, what should be done? What should average citizens in these areas do in the short-term and in the long-term? Should we be begin an exodus to the east coast (as I’ve long been planning)? Invest in 24-hour gas-masks? Does staying inside and closing the windows really help that much?
[quote=“headhonchoII”]The main issue in Taiwan by far agriculture wise is rice stalk burning. I’m wondering if this is the same in the Central Valley too?
Edit- good link here
sfexaminer.com/news/californ … -heartland
It seems the situation has some similarities and differences. The Central Valley has a lot of large ploughed farms including dairy farms. They also burn fuel in fireplaces. So in terms of agricultural pollution it is quite different. However they also have two major highways running North-South, and this is similar to the situation in Taiwan.
It seems the US EPA has no burn days which they implement according to weather forecasts, again a simple policy to implement. Even with that their pollution this year is the worst in 12 years and the worst in the nation.
Some great quotes from the article above, it indicates that the current monitoring system has massive gaps, and that peak numbers in a given locality really matter.
Taiwan’s industrial polluters such as refineries are not a problem in the US, which I find very interesting, the Gulf has refineries yet they don’t show up on the above Airnow map, in fact the whole East coast doesn’t show up, which is pretty amazing![/quote]
Doesn’t surprise me. Singapore has a petrochemical industry and it’s not a grim polluted shithole like most of western Taiwan.
I recall reading in AMCHAM that the new Changhua plant would have been the most advanced and eco-friendly in Taiwan. The others, according to reports, are not even operating at the levels of Chinese plants.
[quote=“dahsiung”]Today the pm 2.5 levels are lower in the South than they have been in recent weeks, perhaps owing to some recent rain. After reading all of the links people posted and a few I found about surrounding countries, this is obviously not a problem isolated in Taiwan. And the fact that they are now more accurately reporting these statistics (around the world and in Taiwan) shows that some bureaucrats are thinking about it and perhaps something will be done, albeit slowly. Still, unhealthy is unhealthy.
So the question remains, what should be done? What should average citizens in these areas do in the short-term and in the long-term? Should we be begin an exodus to the east coast (as I’ve long been planning)? Invest in 24-hour gas-masks? Does staying inside and closing the windows really help that much?[/quote]
I don’t think average citizens care or even notice the air pollution. They grew up with this haze so think its normal unless they suffer from respiratory problems. Well that’s my impression, of course some folks must care. They need a lot more awareness regarding this issue. Awareness of the problem brings pressure for change. Now all the focus seems to be on the 4th nuclear power plant operation.
How to build awareness? It’s an interesting question. One could go around Taiwan taking pictures of the cities and make a website, Taiwan, where are you 
?
Bureaucrats have been aware of Taiwan’s pollution issue for decades, but they think that economic growth should always take precedent and that implementing stricter environmental controls impedes economic growth, whether true or not that’s what they think and they have repeated this many times over the years. Although the problem exists in China to a larger degree it is an excuse to say other countries in the region have these issues, in fact Japan’s air is far cleaner than Taiwan’s if you look at the stats.
As for what can one do, not going out on peak pollution days is one strategy. Avoiding living in the worst polluted places is another. Moving to the East coast is not feasible for me.
Yeah, awareness is definitely going to be key. The nuclear plants in Taiwan have been on the list of most dangerous in the world for a long time, but this issue only stepped to the forefront in the past few months with the student-led protests.
All these new reports make me think about the long-term effects of this kind of air pollution. Having grown up in California, I can’t imagine it’s any worse now - especially with everyone in the states paying much closer attention to it. Makes me wonder how bad it was before. Most data on this kind of air pollution doesn’t go back more than 10-15 years.
The same applies to Taiwan. If it’s this bad now, it was only much worse before. There are many less factories now than before and some of them have even started adhering to emission standards.
This article about Tokyo shows how quickly things can turn around with a determined effort:
japanprobe.com/2012/11/13/ho … -up-tokyo/
Here are some interesting articles from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I should note, instead of providing a direct summary of national air pollution levels, the EPA links to the service AirNOW.gov,which still uses the “under-50-is-okay” measure.
“American Heart Month: Air Pollution and Your Health”
blog.epa.gov/science/2013/02/ame … ur-health/
“Clearing the Air”
blog.epa.gov/science/2012/05/clearing-the-air-3/
“American Heart Month: Taking Action to Protect Our Health”
blog.epa.gov/science/2013/02/ame … ur-health/
A pdf file released by the EPA talking about heart attacks, strokes, and their links to air pollution:
epa.gov/airnow/heart_flyer-1-28-10-final.pdf
A article from the Seattle PI about pm 2.5
weather.seattlepi.com/auto/seatt … lth/pm.asp
Some more thoughts and updates on the situation-
On a positive note, Kaoshiung’s government is forging ahead against the negative forces of the ignorant and outdated ‘GDP raised or else’ focus that the central government works on.
taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ … 2003558778
[quote]According to environmental groups, as early as 1999, measures regulating pollutant emission levels were proposed for inclusion in the Air Pollution Control Act (空氣污染防制法). However, the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ fear of the measures’ potential negative impacts on economic growth and industrial development has been blocking the act from being amended in that regard, the groups said.
The Greater Kaohsiung Government’s Environmental Protection Bureau announced earlier this week that in two years, it will complete a project to monitor and record pollutant emission levels at the city’s 420 factories.
Bureau director Chen Chin-de (陳金淂), who assumed the post in February, said that improving the city’s air quality is one of his major policy goals.
“The central government kept on delaying amendments to the Air Pollution Control Act, so we are unable to enforce air emission standards,” Chen said. “Despite this, we local governments should not shirk our responsibilities. We must have the preparatory work done beforehand, ahead of any amendment, so we can exert pressure on the central government.”[/quote]
In more disturbing news, it seems growing up in areas of high air pollution causes permanent lung damage. This news from London below. What’s interesting about this is that the damage caused by the switch to diesel engines from petrol engines (due to cost and carbon taxes) was flagged and predicted beforehand. While newer diesel engines are cleaner and more efficient than yesteryear, they produce far higher numbers of fine particles per mile driven.
guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/2 … rse-petrol
This was all perfectly predictable and is a failure of narrow minded government policy (focus on carbon reduction), just as much as the failure of Taiwan’s central government GDP growth policy.
guardian.co.uk/environment/2 … lth-crisis
[quote]Dr Ian Mudway, a lecturer in respiratory toxicology with the environmental research group at King’s College London university, has spent several years walking the routes that children take to school in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, measuring the pollutants in the air they breathe and determining their impacts on their respiratory health. He is shocked at the levels of pollutants these children are exposed to on a daily basis and fears for the permanent damage being done by to their lungs by the ultra-fine particles and gases emitted by diesel engines.
East London has long been heavily polluted by industry but Tower Hamlets has some of the busiest roads in Britain passing close to large high-density housing estates. Nowhere in the borough is further than 500 metres from a busy road and new housing developments targeted at young families are popping up right by main roads.
Air pollution, especially from diesel engines, is a “neglected, hidden killer” and children and old people are especially at risk, says Mudway. “There’s strong evidence that if you live near main roads you will have smaller lungs,” he says. “They will not reach capacity and will be stunted. When, or if, people move to a cleaner environment they still do not recover the function they lost. We have good evidence that every child born in Tower Hamlets will have a reduction in the volume of their lungs by the age of eight. The point is, people die of lung disease later on. You store up a problem that will affect you later,” he says.
He lists some of the effects of polluted air. In the short term, it leads to irritation to the eyes, nose and throat, headaches, nausea, bronchitis and pneumonia. Over a longer period it can result in heart attacks and lung diseases, cancers, even damage to the brain, nerves, liver, and kidneys.
“The [people who die] are only the very end of a spectrum of health effects,” he told a group of Tower Hamlet residents at a public meeting organised last month by Friends of the Earth on the extra air pollution which would be caused by a proposed new four-lane road tunnel below the Thames.[/quote]
Air pollution is slowly getting the attention it deserves as the biggest health threat of any pollution source worldwide.
It also suggests to me that, between all the cars, buses and trucks on the two North-South highways , they could be major contributors to pollution on the island overall. I’m very curious as to how they stack up compared to factory and coal fired power plant air pollution. Just yesterday 530,000 cars set off on the highway system!
Reading about how bad the air can get here, I have to laugh because I need to open the window in my office to let in some “fresh” air because the indoor air is infinitely worse.
Where can I buy an air quality monitor? I know the list of air pollutants is long, but is there a machine that can detect most of them? At this point cost isn’t an issue. I almost passed out because they were doing renovations and whatever the hell they were doing, their fumes and dust filled my office.
I know taiwan has laws in the books and an EPA and presumably occupational safety organizations, but we all know how well they earn their pay.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Some more thoughts and updates on the situation-
On a positive note, Kaoshiung (Gaoxiong)'s government is forging ahead against the negative forces of the ignorant and outdated ‘GDP raised or else’ focus that the central government works on.
taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ … 2003558778
[quote]According to environmental groups, as early as 1999, measures regulating pollutant emission levels were proposed for inclusion in the Air Pollution Control Act (空氣污染防制法). However, the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ fear of the measures’ potential negative impacts on economic growth and industrial development has been blocking the act from being amended in that regard, the groups said.
The Greater Kaohsiung Government’s Environmental Protection Bureau announced earlier this week that in two years, it will complete a project to monitor and record pollutant emission levels at the city’s 420 factories.
Bureau director Chen Chin-de (陳金淂), who assumed the post in February, said that improving the city’s air quality is one of his major policy goals.
“The central government kept on delaying amendments to the Air Pollution Control Act, so we are unable to enforce air emission standards,” Chen said. “Despite this, we local governments should not shirk our responsibilities. We must have the preparatory work done beforehand, ahead of any amendment, so we can exert pressure on the central government.”[/quote]
In more disturbing news, it seems growing up in areas of high air pollution causes permanent lung damage. This news from London below. What’s interesting about this is that the damage caused by the switch to diesel engines from petrol engines (due to cost and carbon taxes) was flagged and predicted beforehand. While newer diesel engines are cleaner and more efficient than yesteryear, they produce far higher numbers of fine particles per mile driven.
guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/2 … rse-petrol
This was all perfectly predictable and is a failure of narrow minded government policy (focus on carbon reduction), just as much as the failure of Taiwan’s central government GDP growth policy.
guardian.co.uk/environment/2 … lth-crisis
[quote]Dr Ian Mudway, a lecturer in respiratory toxicology with the environmental research group at King’s College London university, has spent several years walking the routes that children take to school in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, measuring the pollutants in the air they breathe and determining their impacts on their respiratory health. He is shocked at the levels of pollutants these children are exposed to on a daily basis and fears for the permanent damage being done by to their lungs by the ultra-fine particles and gases emitted by diesel engines.
East London has long been heavily polluted by industry but Tower Hamlets has some of the busiest roads in Britain passing close to large high-density housing estates. Nowhere in the borough is further than 500 metres from a busy road and new housing developments targeted at young families are popping up right by main roads.
Air pollution, especially from diesel engines, is a “neglected, hidden killer” and children and old people are especially at risk, says Mudway. “There’s strong evidence that if you live near main roads you will have smaller lungs,” he says. “They will not reach capacity and will be stunted. When, or if, people move to a cleaner environment they still do not recover the function they lost. We have good evidence that every child born in Tower Hamlets will have a reduction in the volume of their lungs by the age of eight. The point is, people die of lung disease later on. You store up a problem that will affect you later,” he says.
He lists some of the effects of polluted air. In the short term, it leads to irritation to the eyes, nose and throat, headaches, nausea, bronchitis and pneumonia. Over a longer period it can result in heart attacks and lung diseases, cancers, even damage to the brain, nerves, liver, and kidneys.
“The [people who die] are only the very end of a spectrum of health effects,” he told a group of Tower Hamlet residents at a public meeting organised last month by Friends of the Earth on the extra air pollution which would be caused by a proposed new four-lane road tunnel below the Thames.[/quote]
Air pollution is slowly getting the attention it deserves as the biggest health threat of any pollution source worldwide.
It also suggests to me that, between all the cars, buses and trucks on the two North-South highways , they could be major contributors to pollution on the island overall. I’m very curious as to how they stack up compared to factory and coal fired power plant air pollution. Just yesterday 530,000 cars set off on the highway system!
chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/nati … eeping.htm[/quote]
HH,completely correct. Governments seem to be going through the motions,to show voters they are trying. In fact they have made some huge blunders for the people and the Planet,like Methanol,Diesel,as you point out…etc,.Will they ever change ?. Not unless it wins votes,I fear.
I’m optimistic that things will improve from here on in as electrics and hybrids become more common along with more focus and awareness of the ill health effects of air pollution overall.
I have to agree. Though many of the posts (especially yours HH) have disturbed me and perhaps decreased my overall happiness 
, I think ultimately I’m optimistic about life here and on the planet in general. Even if governments are slow or negligent to act, the market tends to respond much more quickly. Every year there are more hybrids on the roads, improvements in public transportation, and most importantly, more people caring about these things. As fossil fuel supplies get harder to extract and therefore more expensive (great article about this in a recent TIME that I can’t find online), different solutions will naturally arise.
I’d love to see the same level of energy witnessed in the No More Nukes and Anti-Monopoly demonstrations focused on overall energy policies and reducing air pollution, but it probably needs some kind of spark first.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]I’m optimistic that things will improve from here on in as electrics and hybrids become more common along with more focus and awareness of the ill health effects of air pollution overall.[/quote]I don’t really fall into the camp that believes that there will be a significant improvement because of electrics and hybrids. They will help but I think it will take a long time before they make up a significant portion of the transportation grid. They also still use gas (more efficiently albeit) or electricity that is generated using mostly dirty coal.
Instead improvements will come from the natural life cycle of products that just need to be replaced. I think the significant low hanging fruit that will eliminate itself and hopefully the gov’t speeds up the process. The natural process of older cars being replaced by newer cars. The blue smoke spewing scooters just dying. Factories continuing to shut down. More efficient AC being installed due to older models breaking.
Hopefully the gov’t helps things move faster by continuing to move electricity rates higher. It’s surprising that nobody on here remembers that rates rose something like 25% last summer unless that didn’t actually occur due to public pressure. I barely noticed on my bill although I moved from a huge house with a roommate to a small, new apartment. Along with a rate rise I would like to see a continued shift to natural gas. Another big one that has always bothered me is how many scooters and cars are unregistered and not going through the emissions testing. These cars should just be towed if they are spotted on a public road and the owner can pick it up at a gov’t testing center. The gov’t can also start pushing low profit highly polluting businesses off the island or requiring significant pollution control upgrades.
Well I was trying to inject some positivism. The main thing is that people’s environmental awareness is picking up a lot so hopefully air pollution gets on the population’s radar more.
So the question remains, what should be done? What should average citizens in these areas do in the short-term and in the long-term? Should we be begin an exodus to the east coast (as I’ve long been planning)? Invest in 24-hour gas-masks? Does staying inside and closing the windows really help that much?[/quote]
For me, this is the big and most pressing question.
I found this thread by a key search of the word “bronchitis.” I grew up in Michigan in pretty clean air, moved to China for six years and left because of the pollution. I spent a year in Michigan after that and my health improved dramatically the longer I was there. I moved to Taipei 8-9 months ago and lived in Xindian and two places in Tucheng, all up in the hills. The air seems much better than in Taipei, and Taipei is way better in general than China. But I have to admit, my sense of what constitutes “clean” air has gotten pretty messed up. I’m moving to Hsinchu in July and am hoping to stay something like four years, and to find a place up in the hills somewhere with cleaner air. I’m planning to ride a bike to and from work every day, but am worried about my health- from the air if I do it, from lack of exercise if I don’t!
Clean air is a really high priority for me, what can I do?