Hong Kong scientists to launch alternative air quality health index
Pollution alert system sidelined by government takes specific health risks into account, giving the public advice on levels of physical exertion
Pollution scientists who developed a new air quality alert system for the government that was never adopted plan to launch it themselves.
The experts say their air quality health index (AQHI), to be provided on a website as early as next month, will offer the public better, clearer and more timely advice on health risks than the present government system.
Modelled on a Canadian approach, the new index will be calculated on the risks of hospital admissions for respiratory and cardiovascular diseases from the sum of four air pollutants - sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone and particulate matter.
The current air pollution index (API), introduced in 1995 and never revised, does not take health risks into account and is based on the highest level of concentration on a given day of just one of the four pollutants.
Friends of the Earth welcomed the new index but said the government should replace its own system.
"The public is numb to the severity of the air pollution levels as the numbers are always high," senior environmental affairs officer Melonie Chau Yuet-cheung said. "They do not know how to interpret API figures."
The scientists, who work for local universities, were commissioned to develop the system for the Environmental Protection Department in 2009 but it was never adopted.