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Changing the game

It's long been known that vehicles using old diesel engines cause a high proportion of Hong Kong's roadside pollution. This was confirmed by the release of Hong Kong's 2010 Air Pollutant Emission Inventory recently. It revealed that a relatively small number of old diesel-engined vehicles were causing a relatively high amount of roadside pollution.

The organisation Clean Air Network has worked on this information and calculates that commercial diesel vehicles - pre Euro, Euro I and Euro II - account for only 10 per cent of the vehicles on the road but account for 73 per cent of total roadside respirable suspended particulates (PM10) and 34 per cent of total roadside nitrogen oxides (NOx).

The reason for this is that the older engines are vastly more polluting than properly tuned newer engines. A pre-Euro engine, for example, produces 34 times more respirable particles than a Euro IV engine and 2.6 times more NOx. Even a Euro III engine produces five times more PM10 particles than a Euro IV and 1.4 times as much NOx.

If the network is right, getting rid of Euro II engines and those below it, would reduce PM10 particles by 73 per cent and a significant amount of NOx. According to the Hedley Environmental Index, the high level of roadside emissions in Hong Kong has resulted in an average of 3,200 avoidable deaths each year for the past five years.

This is a figure which the government has evidently felt quite comfortable with even though it exceeds by a long way the number of deaths due to bird flu, Sars, and swine flu, diseases that receive far more attention.

Getting rid of highly polluting vehicles is low-hanging fruit and is hopefully something that can be achieved relatively easily by the Environmental Protection Department.

PR Newswire has really gone to town with a piece on what it describes as "a game-changing collaboration" between Johnnie Walker Blue Label and Porsche Design Studio. In its best purple prose, PR Newswire extols the virtues of a promotional film to describe how this limited edition whiskey was made. Entitled "Engineering a bold new whiskey experience", "the film explores how this game-changing partnership between two modern-day icons was conceived to reveal an exquisite collection of unrivalled whiskey experiences".

We daresay that many of us could assemble a collection of "unrivalled whiskey experiences" but whether we would want them filmed is another matter.

In the first case of its kind since the 1997 handover, we see that three individuals have had their honours removed. They include John Hung, the former managing director of Wheelock & Co who was jailed after being found guilty of accepting a bribe for speeding up someone's application to become a full Jockey Club member. He was awarded the Silver Bauhinia Star in 1999. As well as losing his star, his appointment as a Justice of the Peace has been revoked, we see from the website of the ever-alert David Webb. In addition, Ringo Chiang Sai-cheong and Wu Wing-kai, who were also found guilty of corruption, have been deprived of their Medal of Honour. It is possible that this could prove to be the start of an embarrassing trend in Hong Kong.

We read in the latest magazine an absorbing interview with Richard Champion de Crespigny, the captain of the Qantas A380 that had an engine explosion just after take-off in November 2010. Despite severe damage to the aircraft, he brought the plane down and landed with three tonnes of fuel on board without injuring anyone.

In the ensuing discussion about air safety, the article notes that when a Virgin Atlantic A330, which evacuated passengers at London's Gatwick Airport earlier this year by emergency slides because of a smoke warning in the cargo bay, 55 people were hurt, with injuries such as broken ribs and spinal and cranial injuries. Also, 40 women had pantyhose fused to their skin, caused by the speed of descending escape slides.

We notice this unpleasant prospect doesn't seem to deter female cabin crew from wearing this apparel. A sign of excessive confidence perhaps?

Have you got any stories that Lai See should know about? E-mail them to [email protected]

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