Posted on No Comments on Steering towards environmental disaster: Transport-induced air pollution at the Olympic Games

Steering towards environmental disaster: Transport-induced air pollution at the Olympic Games

“It is the things you cannot see coming that are strong enough to kill you,” award-winning author Jodi Picoult had once said. This could not be further from the truth for air pollution, which is one of the least visible but most harmful types of pollution. Not only are key pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter highly toxic (Bonsu et al., 2020), they are also widely embedded in modern life.


Air pollution is omnipresent in various aspects of urban lifestyles, particularly transport (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2014)

It is thus unsurprising that the Olympic Games — being a mega event involving the large-scale consolidation of urban activity from transportation to construction — significantly generates air pollution. While exact statistics remain uncertain as mentioned previously, the presence of smoggy skies and high respiratory infection rates suggest that air pollution at the Olympic Games is a clear cause for concern. It is hence instrumental to identify the biggest underlying triggers, so that authorities can work towards mitigating their impacts.

One of such triggers is transport, which facilitates the movement of those involved in the Olympic Games at different spatial scales. At the global scale, air transport is used to transport athletes and spectators from their home countries to the host city. While this transport mode is efficient given its relatively high speed and load capacity, enabling the large-scale transnational movement of people, it is also highly pollutive. Commercial aircraft emit significant amounts of nitrogen dioxide when flying in the free troposphere, forming the greenhouse gas ozone which traps outgoing solar radiation at the ground level (Colvile et al., 2001). Carbon dioxide, a pollutant which is produced during fuel combustion for aircraft engines, exacerbates such warming by absorbing outgoing infrared radiation (Colvile et al., 2001). While air travel at the Olympic Games only generates 65000 tons of carbon dioxide, constituting barely one month’s worth of emissions from a coal plant (Jacobo, 2021), its environmental and health-related impacts remain worrying as these pollutants have long residence times.

The emission of nitrogen dioxide by aeroplanes in the free troposphere exacerbates the greenhouse effect (Hotten, 2019)

Land transport at the city scale is equally, if not more, pollutive. During the Olympic Games, road traffic is remarkably high, not only because of the need for vehicles to transport athletes and staff to Olympic venues, but also the surge in tourists travelling there. This produces substantial vehicle emissions which not only contain radiation-trapping ozone, but also particulate matter that jeopardises air quality and causes respiratory illnesses when overly inhaled (He, Fan and Zhou, 2016).

It is hence crucial to be mindful of the significant role that transport plays in causing air pollution at the Olympic Games — only then can we foresee air pollution and its associated impacts, and take mitigation measures. Otherwise, we will be literally and figuratively steering towards environmental disaster.

References

Bonsu, N. O., Pope, F., Ababio, M. O., Appoh, E., Ashinyo, M. E., Essuman, S. N., Donkor, L. CS., & Thomson, I. (2020). How Coronavirus (COVID-19) has made the invisible silent killer of air pollution visible: lessons for building resilient communities. Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research, 28(1), 21219-21220. https://doi.org/10.26717/bjstr.2020.28.004587 

Colvile, R. N., Hutchinson, E. J., Mindell, J. S., & Warren, R. F. (2001). The transport sector as a source of air pollution. Atmospheric environment, 35(9), 1537-1565. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1352-2310(00)00551-3 

He, G., Fan, M., & Zhou, M. (2016). The effect of air pollution on mortality in China: Evidence from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. HKUST Institute for Emerging Market Studies Working Paper No. 2015-03. Available at: https://iems.ust.hk/publications/iems-working-papers/guojun-he-effect-air-pollution-mortality-china-olympic 

Hotten, R. (2019). Could aviation ever be less polluting? [Online image]. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48185337 

Jacobo, J. (2021, August 2). How the Tokyo Olympics could affect climate change. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/International/tokyo-olympics-ban-spectators-affect-environment/story?id=78151177 

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2014). The Cost of Air Pollution [Online image]. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. https://www.oecd.org/env/the-cost-of-air-pollution-9789264210448-en.htm

Posted on No Comments on Just how severe is Olympic pollution?

Just how severe is Olympic pollution?

Hello and welcome back to Quit Playing Games (With Our Earth)! For most readers, you might have seen my previous post on the growing problem of anthropogenic-induced Olympic pollution, and obtained a brief understanding of the issue’s deep-rooted nature. However, you might still be wondering exactly how severe the impact of the Olympic Games on the environment is — to what extent is it changing weather patterns and causing disruptions to our ecosystem?

The simple answer is that we cannot be certain, given inherent difficulties in data collection. Being a highly-celebrated mega event, the Olympic Games attracts massive numbers of spectators and tourists who wish to experience the Olympic spirit lingering in host cities. A case in point would be the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, which drew in a whopping 1.17 million tourists, twice of that for the widely hyped 2014 World Cup (de Faria Nogueira and Di Cola, 2018). While such dense tourism inflows are welcomed by host cities for the economic growth they bring, they also make it challenging for authorities to determine the exact extent of pollutive activities and consequently, the amount of pollution generated.

Record tourist numbers were observed in Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Olympic Games (China Daily, 2016)

As per Figure 1, the calculation of carbon footprint by the International Olympics Committee (IOC) only accounted for those who were officially recognised by the IOC to have attended the Olympics — such as sports experts and staff — or purchased Olympic-related merchandise. Pollution data could thus be understated, as the consumption patterns of the aforementioned tourists who were also present at the Olympic Games were not acknowledged. In fact, this was observed for the 2016 Olympic Games, where transport-related pollution data was under-calculated. While IOC reports had expressed hope of falling carbon emissions, with approximately 28500 athletes and staff to be flown via the carbon offset scheme (Clark, 2016), some argued otherwise, pointing out that spectators travelling by air were not included. This reinforces the sheer difficulty of quantifying pollution data at mega events, with certain pollutive activities falling under authorities’ radars.

Figure 1: A breakdown of the carbon footprint produced in 2016 and 2017, which were Olympic Games and non-Games years respectively (IOC, 2018)

Nevertheless, we should still exercise environmental consciousness at the Olympic Games, and strive to minimise pollution. While making a consumption choice takes mere seconds, removing the pollutants released during that consumption takes years, and even decades. This concept of residence time, which refers to the average time a pollutant spends in a pollution medium before being removed (Zhao et al., 2020), will be further elaborated in subsequent posts on water pollution, so stay tuned!

References

China Daily (2016). Rio sees 1.17 million tourists during Olympics, zero cases of Zika [Online image]. China Daily. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/2016rioolympics/2016-08/25/content_26591901.htm 

Clark, S. (2016, August 18). The Environmental Impact Of The Olympics. HuffPost. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/-frontier/the-environmental-impact-_b_11581162.html 

de Faria Nogueira, M. A., & Di Cola, L. F. L. L. (2018). From marvelous city to Olympic city: the image of Rio de Janeiro as tourist destination. In Z. Pinto-Coelho & R. Pinto (Eds.), Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais/Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies (pp. 103-120). Centro de Estudos of Communication and Society. 

International Olympics Committee (2018). IOC Sustainability Report [Online image]. International Olympics Committee. https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/IOC/What-We-Do/celebrate-olympic-games/Sustainability/IOC%20Sustainability%20Report_Final%20Rev1.pdf 

Zhao, N., Wang, G., Li, G., Lang, J., & Zhang, H. (2020). Air pollution episodes during the COVID-19 outbreak in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region of China: An insight into the transport pathways and source distribution. Environmental Pollution, 267, 1-11. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.envpol.2020.115617

Posted on No Comments on Introduction: Understanding Olympic Pollution

Introduction: Understanding Olympic Pollution

It is indisputable that the Olympic Games remains one of the most celebrated events in history. Held once every four years, the Olympic Games not only attracts massive numbers of spectators eager to catch sporting action, but also extensive coverage from media houses eager to capture the latest updates. A study by the International Olympic Committee (2021) reported that the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games had a viewership of 3.05 billion — an all-time high. I was one of the 3.05 billion myself, watching excitedly as national swimmer Joseph Schooling fought to the finish line (and I am sure you would have, too). 

But the grandeur of the Olympic Games goes beyond huge crowds and widespread publicity — it is also evident in the placemaking strategies that policymakers adopt to uplift their cities’ urban image (De Brito and Richards, 2017). Iconic stadiums and recreational infrastructure pepper cities’ skylines, not only creating an artistic spectacle but also painting pictures of liveable homes. Such is the case for the Chinese city of Beijing — during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, multiple sports and recreational venues like the Beijing National Stadium were constructed, adding vibrancy to Beijing’s landscape.

The iconic Beijing National Stadium that was home to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (National Geographic, n.d.)

Beneath the glitz and glamour of the Olympic Games lies a grim reality, however. Across various stages of the Olympic Games, from initial preparations to actual matches, significant amounts of pollution are being generated through human activities. These include the transportation of athletes and spectators to venues in carbon-intensive transport modes, display of light shows, and many others that remain unseen to the public but hurt the ecosystem equally deeply. Yet, such anthropogenic pollution is only likely to worsen, given the established nature and sheer scale of the Olympic Games that make it challenging to implement environmental reforms in the short-term (Clark, 2016).

Smog-filled skies in Beijing during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (Jamieson, 2009)

This is why I started ‘Quit Playing Games (With Our Earth)’ — to shed light on this pressing issue of Olympic pollution that we overlook amidst our enduring focus on the matches (and our favourite athletes). Subsequently, I will not only be exploring the types of pollution produced by the Olympic Games and their impacts, but also the green initiatives that host cities have and will be implementing. Hopefully, as you accompany me on this journey, you will better understand how the Olympic Games contributes to environmental pollution, and be inspired to think about how you can also play a part in making the event a greener one!

References

Clark, S. (2016, August 18). The Environmental Impact Of The Olympics. HuffPost. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/-frontier/the-environmental-impact-_b_11581162.html 

De Brito, M. P., & Richards, G. W. (2017). Events and placemaking. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 8(1), 8-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEFM-09-2016-0063 

International Olympics Committee. (2021, December 8). Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 watched by more than 3 billion people [Press release]. https://olympics.com/ioc/news/olympic-games-tokyo-2020-watched-by-more-than-3-billion-people#:~:text=The%20Olympic%20Games%20Tokyo%202020,International%20Olympic%20Committee%20(IOC).&text=A%20total%20of%203.05%20billion,linear%20TV%20and%20digital%20platforms 

Jamieson, A. (2009). Beijing Olympics were the most polluted games ever, researchers say [Online image]. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/london-2012/5597277/Beijing-Olympics-were-the-most-polluted-games-ever-researchers-say.html 

National Geographic. (n.d.). Beijing National Stadium [Online image]. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/tdigh-04-06-olympics/