I HOPE Kathy Griffin's article on ''This poisoned land'' (Saturday Review, June 5) will add to popular awareness of threats to health which are ubiquitous in Hongkong's environment, and will increase the political vigour needed to reduce them. As Ms Griffin reminded us, Hongkong's environmental air is customarily thick with traffic fumes - hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, ozone and lead - all with recognised toxic properties. With sewage ''enough to fill 1,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools'' being dumped into Hongkong waters daily, it is no surprise that the fragrance of Hongkong's harbours is rarely floral and that locally-caught shellfish must be considered suspect. And microbilogical pollution of water is usually accompanied by chemical pollution, as Hongkong again shows. Chemical toxicity is a growing threat because of the increasing numbers and complexity of industrial chemicals now permeating the public's environment: 65,000 synthetic chemicals have been produced by man, but only 20 per cent have been tested for toxicity in animals. So can we imagine what is going into Hongkong's water supply at its riverine source in rapidly-industrialising China? How right Kathy Griffin was to warn us about the implications for public health! Perched on the edge of this crater of environmental toxicity, Hongkong's population surely needs a continuing supply of highly-trained experts in public health to safeguard the public's health - to investigate, guide and warn or reassure. Clearly, quality recruitment to the academic departments of public health is essential for maintaining the training of those public health practitioners. So what is happening in Hongkong? A policy is being introduced whereby the incomes of local, academic public health doctors in Hongkong will be significantly downgraded by comparison with those of their hospital-based counterparts. This policy of inequality in clinical academia, which is not considered acceptable in the UK, cannot fail to damage the quality of academic public health in Hongkong, to the detriment of public health training. Given the environment of Hongkong as described by Kathy Griffin, ''short-sighted'' is the mildest descrption this policy deserves. The history of public health includes a list of cities and countries where disastrous consequences have arisen when this discipline was downgraded or ignored. Hongkong seems prepared to risk joining that list. Professor OWEN L. LLOYD Chairman Department of Community and Family Medicine The Chinese University of Hongkong
