Air is harming our children, parents say
Nine out of 10 parents think the city's air quality is harmful to their children's health, a survey has found.
It also found that 84 per cent of parents are dissatisfied with the air quality, to the extent that a third of respondents have considered leaving.
The Clean Air Network, an independent group that encourages public comment on air pollution, surveyed about 500 local and expatriate parents in 10 clinics across the city in February and March.
The group carried out the survey on parents' perceptions of air quality because pollution was particularly dangerous to children, whose lungs, metabolic and immune systems were still developing, the group's campaign manager Kwong Sum-yin said.
The survey was released a day after the Legislative Council passed a motion asking environmental officials to take swift and effective action to clean up the air.
More than half of the respondents said the air quality seriously affected their children's respiratory health while 34 per cent said it somewhat affected their health.
When it came to outdoor activities, half of the parents said neither they nor their children took part in them when the pollution was bad. And about a third of parents said they had thought about leaving the city because of the effects of pollution on their children's health.
Dr Alfred Tam Yat-cheung, a paediatrician and chairman of the Hong Kong Asthma Society, said when the air was bad - such as when the sandstorm blanketed the city in March - the best people could do was stay indoors and shut the windows.
However, a number of parents said locking their children indoors was not ideal.
To alleviate the problem, the network's chief executive Joanne Ooi suggested the government update its air pollution objectives because they did not effectively show how bad the air was.
Lam said coming up with a warning system, similar to that used for typhoons, would let the public know when the pollution was severe.
