Month: March 2022

Hi everyone! We have finally come to our last country – Vietnam! Let’s check out what the air quality is like today:

The air quality in Vietnam is moderate, and unhealthy for sensitive groups. In this blog, Vietnam is the only country I covered which is nearest to where we are right now. Does this mean we do not have to worry about the current reality on the ground?

The Vietnamese are extremely concerned about the air pollution that has been deteriorating in recent years. According to a survey done by Quy, 79% of the respondents are most worried about air pollution, 71% are worried about water pollution, 62% are worried about food contamination, 59% are worried about plastic waste pollution, and 55% are worried about deforestation. It seems like the people of Vietnam are environmentally conscious, which is a good thing.

Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have been considered as the top 15 polluted cities in Southeast Asia in 2020. Because air quality in Vietnam is below the standard set by the World Health Organization, life expectancy of Vietnamese people are reduced by a year, and this costs the country about 5% of its annual GDP. If you click on the hyperlink in the previous sentence, you will read about Vietnam’s poor urban planning that exacerbates Vietnam’s transportation issues. Just as I mentioned in my post on Pakistan, old vehicles tend to have limited emission control technology. During traffic jams, large amounts of air pollutants get released into the atmosphere. The article also mentions about the residential and commercial construction sites that fill the city centre with dust, the pollutants that get released from biomass cooking stoves in informal settlements in the city, as well as the coal power plants and cement and steel manufacturers, which all contribute to worsening air quality. The article ends by suggesting that Vietnam is too focused on short-term measures, and there are almost no long-term policies in place.

Another relevant article I found claims that the smog in Hanoi is a bigger threat than COVID-19. Despite this, I think that unlike Pakistan, the Vietnam government is being proactive to local concerns. My post on Pakistan talks about the lack of alternative modes of transport to ease congested roads. In Vietnam, this is not the case. Take a look at the video below which shares more about the initiative to reduce traffic jams, and to control air pollution:

If other countries discussed on this blog had an effective government like this, air pollution caused by transportation can be significantly reduced. But is this enough? And more importantly, can the Vietnam government do more? My next post, which is the last post covering a specific country, will examine 7 papers from various journals.

See you in the next one! ✿

References

Do, T. N. (2020) Vietnam’s Big Air Pollution Challenge. 30 March. The Diplomat. Available from: https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/vietnams-big-air-pollution-challenge/ [Accessed: 28 March 2022].

IQAir (2022) Air Quality in Vietnam. 28 March. Available from: https://www.iqair.com/us/vietnam [Accessed: 28 March 2022].

Nguyen, S. (2021) In Vietnam, Air Pollution a Bigger Daily Threat than COVID-19, as Smog Envelops Hanoi. 27 January. South China Morning Post. Available from: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3119332/vietnam-air-pollution-bigger-daily-threat-covid-19 [Accessed: 28 March 2022].

Quy, N. (2021) Air Pollution Top Environmental Concern Among Vietnamese Citizens. 12 March. Available from: https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/air-pollution-top-environmental-concern-among-vietnamese-citizens-4247705.html [Accessed: 28 March 2022].

South China Morning Post (2021) Vietnam rolls out first urban railway in Hanoi to reduce traffic and environmental pollution. 9 November. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv5m275w53Y [Accessed: 28 March 2022].

Hi everyone! Today’s second post of the week will include a wide range of articles. I would like to start off by reviewing the paper by Khan (2022) because it covers the bulk of what I discussed in my previous post (i.e. air pollution). Khan was interested in studying how air pollution compounded the number of people affected by COVID-19. He found that air pollutants in Pakistan, mainly NO2, PM2.5 and PM10, increased the likelihood of COVID-19 mortality. He ends off his paper by concluding that relevant stakeholders need to work on the kinds of urbanization projects taking place, water and manufacturing systems, home heating, and transportation.

My previous blogpost also briefly mentioned about how the government blamed its agricultural farmers for the smog in cities. As such, I found a paper by Ullah et al. (2018) that examines whether current agricultural ecosystems in Pakistan cause environmental pollution. In short, this is indeed the case – biomass-burned crop residues, livestock stock, agriculture machinery, cereal production, and many other crop productions contribute to a large amount of CO2 emissions in Pakistan, hence, contributing to pollution. Nevertheless, Ullah et al. do not suggest that Pakistan should abandon its agricultural sector. Instead, they suggest that Pakistan should find alternative ways of cycle usage, rather than burning land to make way for crop production. They also recommend more pragmatic agricultural practices, that are also cost-effective. They also highlighted that organic farming could be a way to move forward. Pakistan currently lacks a set of coordinated policies. As such, this is one avenue leaders should work on.

Metal and particularly mercury pollution were also issues faced in Pakistan. Shakir et al. (2016) produced a book that examines the effects of metal pollution to humans. For instance, heavy metals like Hg, As, Pb, and Cd are biologically non-essential, and can be toxic for all of us, if they are present in high concentrations. Other metals such as Zn and Fe can cause gastric disorders, vomiting, or skin irritation. Meanwhile, Ni, Cr, Pb, Cd, and Cu can lead to heart problems, cancer, or leukaemia, and Co and Mg can induce hypertension or anaemia. It is a fairly insightful book to understanding how the effects of metal pollution are diverse and frightening. Ali et al. (2019) focus mainly on Hg (mercury) – mercury enters humans through dust particles in the air, and enters environments through atmospheric deposition and gold mining. It was also interesting to see how they studied mercury concentrations by collecting hair samples, like the ones in Madagascar!

The paper by Jafri et al. (2021) is slightly technical and full of maths, but one thing I found relevant what that they also echoed the sentiments made by the scary moms mentioned in my previous blog post – Pakistani leaders need to properly manage mass bus transit schemes or promote rail travel to prevent the overcrowding of polluting vehicles on roads.

The other two papers I found this week were about water and e-waste pollution. Azizullah et al. (2011) examine how polluted drinking water sources in Pakistan are filled with toxic metals, pesticides, and coliforms. I think I have covered water pollution to great lengths in previous blog posts. So if you are interested in learning more about how they studied water pollution in Pakistan, you can click the link in the references! Finally, the paper by Iqbal et al. (2017) caught my eye because unlike other waste pollution research done in other countries covered on this blog, this paper focuses on electronic waste.

I recall a module I took with Dr Grundy-Warr – GE3210 Natural Resources Policy and Practice. In that module, we learnt about the built-in obsolescence of current digital devices. This characteristic is the reason why there are so many electronic waste being discarded and collected in countries in the Global South. Iqbal et al. examines the heterogenous mixture of metals, plastics, glass, and even ceramics present in this unique form of waste. Countries like Pakistan are prone to recycling these forms of waste through the informal economy to maintain a decent income. I think I have gone a little too much for this blog post. I’ll try my best to make the remaining ones more interactive by sourcing for more interesting videos!

Up next, Ukraine. See you in the next one! ✿

References

Ali, W., Junaid, M., Aslam, M. W., Ali, K., Rasool, A. & Zhang, H. (2019) A Review on the Status of Mercury Pollution in Pakistan: Sources and Impacts. Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. 76, 519-527. Available from: https://link-springer-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/article/10.1007%2Fs00244-019-00613-0 [Accessed: 18 March 2022].

Azizullah, A., Khattak, M. N. K., Richter, P. & Hader, D. P. (2011) Water Pollution in Pakistan and its Impact on Public Health – A Review. Environment International. 37(2), 479-497. Available from: https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/science/article/pii/S0160412010002060?via%3Dihub [Accessed: 18 March 2022].

Iqbal, M., Syed, J. H., Breivik, K., Chaudhry, M. J. I., Li, J., Zhang, G. & Malik, R. N. (2017) E-Waste Driven Pollution in Pakistan: The First Evidence of Environmental and Human Exposure to Flame Retardants (FRs) in Karachi City. Environmental Science & Technology. 51(23), 13895-13905. Available from: https://pubs-acs-org.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b03159 [Accessed: 18 March 2022].

Jafri, M. A. H., Liu, H., Majeed, M. T., Ahmad, W., Ullah, S. & Xue, R. (2021) Physical Infrastructure, Energy Consumption, Economic Growth, and Environmental Pollution in Pakistan: An Asymmetry Analysis. Environmental Science and Pollution Research. 28, 16129-16139. Available from: https://link-springer-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/article/10.1007%2Fs11356-020-11787-9 [Accessed: 18 March 2022].

Khan, Y. A. (2021) Risk of Mortality due to COVID-19 and Air Pollution in Pakistan. Environmental Science and Pollution Research. 29, 2063-2072. Available from: https://link-springer-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/article/10.1007%2Fs11356-021-15654-z [Accessed: 18 March 2022].

Shakir, S. K., Azizullah, A., Murad, W., Daud, M. K., Nabeela, F., Rahman, H., Rehman, S. U. & Hader, D. P. (2016) Toxic Metal Pollution in Pakistan and its Possible Risks to Public Health. Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. 242, 1-60. Available from: https://link-springer-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/chapter/10.1007%2F398_2016_9 [Accessed: 18 March 2022].

Ullah, A., Khan, D., Khan, I. & Zheng, S. (2018) Does Agricultural Ecosystem Cause Environmental Pollution in Pakistan? Promise and Menace. Environmental Science and Pollution Research. 25, 13938-13955. Available from: https://link-springer-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/article/10.1007%2Fs11356-018-1530-4 [Accessed: 18 March 2022].

Hi everyone! This week, we will be covering Pakistan. Let’s take a look at the current air quality in the region. According to IQAir, the AQI index is currently 193 in Bahawalpur, a city bordering Pakistan and India. You might be wondering why I chose to cover Pakistan instead of India. The main reason in IQAir’s website, Pakistan ranks 2^nd amongst countries that have the worst air qualities; Bangladesh ranks first, and India ranks third.

Why exactly is Pakistan one of the most polluted countries in the world?

Many of the vehicles in Pakistan use a highly polluting sulphur-laden gas. Transportation in Pakistan is a source of many problems. There has been an attempt to switch vehicles into the Euro 5 emissions standard, to reduce the amount of pollutants being released into the atmosphere. Despite this, progress has been slow. Some government authorities do not even take the current pollution issue seriously. This is what the city of Lahore looked like in December, which is just around less than 3 months ago:

Some locals argue that pollution is a result of government failure because even though more than 500 industrial units have been fined, and smoke-emitting vehicles and brick kilns have been banned, the air quality in many Pakistani cities remain like the one in the image above.

Many government officials and politicians refuse to take the blame, and instead point to innocent farmers for being the cause of much of the smog in cities such as Lahore (i.e. crop burning for agricultural purposes). They refuse to reflect and consider investing in proper public transport structures to reduce the number of vehicles on the road.

Some people have claimed that maybe more lockdowns should be set to reduce the number of people going out. These people drew inspiration from the lockdowns at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m sure you and I can agree that this is not a sustainable strategy. What Pakistan needs to do is to tackle pollution at its source – in this case, managing vehicle and road network systems.

Others, such as mothers, have forged a way against pollution, by lobbying other parents and schools to reinstate buses to reduce vehicle emissions. They are activists who have sought to make change because their government leaders have failed them.

It is unfortunate that leaders in many countries in the Global South lack the necessary qualities to protect its people. As reported by Greenstone & Fan (2019), if Pakistan worked on improving the air qualities in many of its cities, its residents would live up to 1.2 to 1.9 years longer. In the next post of the week, I will be glossing over 6 papers done by scholars to study the different types of pollution experienced in Pakistan.

See you in the next one! ✿

References

Al Jazeera (2021) Pakistan’s Lahore Again Tops World’s Most Polluted Cities List. 3 December. Available from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/pakistan-lahore-tops-most-polluted-cities-list#:~:text=Pakistani%20authorities%20blame%20industrial%20emissions,10%20most%20climate%2Dvulnerable%20nations. [Accessed: 14 March 2022].

Ali, S. M. (2021) How Lahore Became the World’s Most Polluted Place. 29 November. FP. Available from: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/29/pakistan-lahore-pollution-fossil-fuels-climate/ [Accessed: 14 March 2022].

Butt, D. (2021) The World Must Pay Attention to Pakistan’s Air Pollution Crisis. 16 December. Atlantic Council. Available from: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/southasiasource/the-world-must-pay-attention-to-pakistans-air-pollution-crisis/ [Accessed: 14 March 2022].

Greenstone, M. & Fan, Q. C. (2019) Pakistan’s Air Pollution Challenge & Potential for Longer Lives. Air Quality Life Index. Available from: https://aqli.epic.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Pakistan-Report.pdf [Accessed: 14 March

Hadid, D. (2020) ‘Scary Moms’ are Part of the Citizen War Against Pollution in Pakistan. 6 January. NPR. Available from: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/06/792693712/scary-moms-are-part-of-the-citizen-war-against-pollution-in-pakistan [Accessed: 14 March 2022].

IQAir (2022) Air Quality in Pakistan. 14 March. Available from: https://www.iqair.com/pakistan [Accessed: 14 March].

Khan, S. (2021) Why Pakistan has Some of the Most Polluted Cities in the World. 1 November. DW. Available from: https://www.dw.com/en/why-pakistan-has-some-of-the-most-polluted-cities-in-the-world/a-59686579 [Accessed: 14 March 2022].

Tanis, F. (2022) Lahore, Pakistan, is Locking Down to Improve Air Quality. 9 January. NPR. Available from: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/09/1071663548/lahore-pakistan-locks-down-for-air-quality [Accessed: 14 March 2022].

Hi everyone! In today’s second post of the week, I will be going through the health effects faced by the people in Mongolia. Even though air pollution does not discriminately choose which people to cause harm to, children suffer the most from it in Mongolia.

Coal is essential if Mongols wish to survive the winter months. The air in Mongolia is so bad, that this image below is what a good day in Mongolia looks like:

Many have argued that informal settlers are not entirely to blame for air pollution because a lot of coal is also used in the mining industries in Mongolia. As such, corrupt politicians are ignoring or shifting the blame to innocent citizens who wish to survive. They only serve the agencies and corporations that finance them, rather than the people they are meant to serve.

As a result, children and young women of child bearing ages experience shorter lifespans, as brief in the article by Warburton et al. (2013). The study by Enkhmaa et al. (2014) also shows the correlation between winter air pollution and spontaneous abortion. Many women face pregnancy losses due to the air pollutants that they breathe in. Cousins (2019) wrote in her article that the government is aware on these side-effects, and have implemented a scheme to move locals living in informal settlements into formal apartments, or communal spaces that are connected to the communal living grid. There was also a prohibition of the waste burning in 2016. But are these really effective? Many of those who live in informal settlements are poor, and they cannot afford to move out and sustain a livelihood in the centre of the city. She also adds that coal has to be used during the winter months because other fuels such as wood and dung are not effective in keeping locals warm in a season where temperatures can reach to -40 degrees Celsius. There is no affordable alternative fuel that is clean in Mongolia. The current reality is very bleak.

A paper by Lv et al. (2020) uses an interesting pollution damage method, and establishes a useful index system to measure the external costs caused by pollution in the country. It is slightly complicated, but they generally conclude that air pollution can induce water and solid waste pollution, through the destruction of forest and aquatic ecosystems, as well as farmland. It sounds strange, but to better understand this, you can refer to pages 1136 to 1139.

Finally, the paper I found done by Luvsan et al. (2012) studies the role of SO2 in air pollution in Mongolia. They basically concluded that because of industrialization and urbanization, more of the poor are forced to move out to informal settlements, hence, contributing to indoor air pollution caused by indoor coal heating. The SO2 emitted from a range of sources also worsens air quality due to the unique meteorological parameters of the region, such as wind direction and speed, relative humidity and especially temperature.

To sum up all that I have covered in this post and the one before this, you can look into these infographics below:

Up next, Pakistan. See you in the next one! ✿

References

Cousins, S. (2019). Air Pollution in Mongolia. Bulletin World Health Organization. 97(2), 79-80. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6357570/?tool=pmcentrez&report=abstract [Accessed: 11 March 2022].

Enkhmaa, D., Warburton, N., Javzandulam, B., Uyanga, J., Khishigsuren, Y., Lodoysamba, S., Enkhtur, S. & Warburton, D. (2014) Seasonal Ambient Air Pollution Correlates Strongly With Spontaneous Abortion in Mongolia. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth. 14(146), 1-7. Available from: https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2393-14-146 [Accessed: 11 March 2022].

Gardiner, B. (2019) Kids Suffer Most in One of Earth’s Most Polluted Cities. 27 March. National Geographic. Available from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/mongolia-air-pollution [Accessed: 7 March 2022].

Luvsan, M. E., Shie, R. H., Purevdorj, T., Badarch, L., Baldorj, B. & Chan, C. C. (2012) The Influence of Emission Sources and Meteorological Conditions on SO2 Pollution in Mongolia. Atmospheric Environment. 61, 542-549. Available from: https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/science/article/pii/S1352231012007169?via%3Dihub [Accessed: 11 March 2022].

Lv, H. D., Zhou, J. S., Yang, L., Li, Y. M. & Liu, L. (2018) An Accounting of the External Environmental Costs of Coal in Inner Mongolia using the Pollution Damage Method. Environment, Development, and Sustainability. 22, 1299-1321. Available from: https://link-springer-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/content/pdf/10.1007/s10668-018-0249-1.pdf [Accessed: 11 March 2022].

Warbuton, D., Gilliland, F. & Dashdendev, B. (2013) Environmental Pollution in Mongolia: Effects Across the Lifespan. Environmental Research. 124, 65-66. Available from: https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/science/article/pii/S0013935113000716?via%3Dihub [Accessed: 11 March 2022].

Hi everyone! To start off the week, let’s take a look at the air quality in Mongolia. I was shocked to see the screenshot below

I have never been to Mongolia, and I have never searched the country up before. Based on my own geographical imagination of the country, I would think that it is a largely underdeveloped country filled with lots of desert spaces and agricultural land. But as you see in the screenshot, the AQI index is as high as 213! According to IQAir, Mongolia is the 4^th most air polluted country in 2020! Why is this so?

The country’s capital, Ulaanbaatar is one of the most polluted cities in the world. According to UNICEF, the daily average PM2.5 pollution levels in the capital can reach 27 times higher than the safe level assigned by the World Health Organization. Other sources claim that PM2.5 concentration levels are almost 40 times higher than the safe level. Most of the air pollution is caused by the coal-burning stoves operated in informal settlements during the cold season. In these settlements, basic social infrastructures such as heating and water are not provided. In 2019, a ban was set against the use of raw coal, which is mainly used by these informal settlers in their homes. Settlers were interviewed and some even stated that even though they struggled during the winter months, they hoped that the sacrifice they had to go through would improve the overall air quality in the city. As mentioned by Jun, if Mongolia wishes to sustainably reduce air pollution, it has to provide other socio-economic policies to life people out of poverty. If not, there will be more preventable deaths. You can look at the article posted by her using the hyperlink. It provides a comprehensive summary of the situation in Mongolia.

To sum up, Mongolia’s pollution is worrying because of the consequences it brings to the marginalized. This video on TIME explains the current lives of Mongols

As you can see, Mongolia is heavily reliant on coal. During the winter months, temperatures can fall down to almost -24 degrees celsius. Pollution is an inevitable part of life for Mongols. Unlike the other countries in the Global South studied covered on this blog, the climate plays a crucial role in pollution. It gets too cold. So Mongols have to use coal to keep warm. Coal pollutes the air. The air makes children fall ill. It is a never ending cycle because these people cannot influence the climate. They also cannot change their coal use because they are the most affected by climate, and the most poor. This image below emphasizes how Mongols face the highest pollution levels during the winter months.

In the next post this week, I will summarize what scholars have studied about the effects of air pollution.

See you in the next one! ✿

References

Hincks, J. (2018) Life in the Most Polluted Capital in the World. 23 March. TIME. Available from: https://time.com/longform/ulan-bator-mongolia-most-polluted-capital/ [Accessed: 7 March 2022].

IQAir (2022) Air Quality in Mongolia. 7 March. Available from: https://www.iqair.com/mongolia [Accessed: 7 March 2022].

Jun, S. (n. d.) Is the Raw Coal Ban a Silver Bullet to Solving Air Pollution in Mongolia?: A Study of the Mongolian Government’s Air Pollution Reduction Policies and Recommendations in the Context of COVID-19. Journal of Public & International Affairs. Available from: https://jpia.princeton.edu/news/raw-coal-ban-silver-bullet-solving-air-pollution-mongolia-study-mongolian-governments-air [Accessed: 7 March 2022].

Kwong, E. (2019) Mongolia’s Capital Banned Coal to Fix its Pollution Problem. Will it Work? 30 July. NPR. Available from: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/727688757/mongolias-capital-banned-coal-to-fix-its-pollution-problem-will-it-work [Accessed: 7 March 2022].

UNICEF (n. d.) Environment & Air Pollution Climate Change and Environmental Degradation Undermine the Rights of Every Child. Available from: https://www.unicef.org/mongolia/environment-air-pollution#:~:text=The%20challenges,level%20WHO%20recommends%20as%20safe. [Accessed: 7 March 2022].