As the central government this week announced sweeping new measures to combat air pollution, an internationally respected local scientist described Hong Kong's air quality as nothing short of a medical emergency.
Anthony Hedley, of Hong Kong University's department of community Medicine, returned this week from a World Health Organisation meeting held in Bonn, Germany, to draw up air quality guidelines for the 21st century. Data gathered in Hong Kong featured prominently in the deliberations in Bonn.
Professor Hedley, who served on the advisory panel that reviewed the guidelines, said it was high time the government stopped pretending that pollution levels stipulated in our air quality objectives were safe. He said the new WHO guidelines, slated for release in December, are expected to be 200 to 300 per cent more stringent than those currently in use in Hong Kong.
'But even these are just numbers,' he said. 'It is now generally accepted that there are no safe minimum exposure levels.'
Professor Hedley said that by using these obsolete guidelines to assess proposed developments, such as new roads, Hong Kong continued to raise pollution levels dangerously high.
But he reserved his strongest criticism for those who described pollution as an unavoidable cost of progress, saying that our health was effectively being stolen and sold by powerful economic interests that exert control over the government through, for example, the functional constituencies.
'We all want progress, yes, but at what price - our children's lungs? When all the hidden costs are taken into account, this is not economic development. It is economic disaster,' he said.