Taiwan’s air pollution has already launched protests, but tackling its sources will involve some very tough choices.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/02/19
By: Timothy Ferry
“When the weather gets cold, the issue of air pollution heats up,” says Tsai Hung-teh (蔡鴻德), director general of the Environmental Protection Administration’s Department of Air Quality Protection and Noise Control. During the winter months, he notes, the air quality in central and southern Taiwan often registers in the red zone – considered unhealthy – on Taiwan’s Air Quality Index (AQI).
Photo credit:Ellery ＠ Ｗikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0
But the situation appears due almost as much to the polluted air sweeping across the Taiwan Strait, carried on prevailing winter winds blowing in from China, as it is to locally produced emissions. In fact, argues Tsai, “the air quality is actually getting better in Taiwan.” He says that Taiwan has significantly reduced many of the most prevalent and dangerous pollutants, including suspended particulates, volatile organic compounds (VOC), and sulfuric oxides (SOX).
Yet these points do not hold much weight with environmentalist activists from Taichung and Kaohsiung, who allude to past industrial policies that spurred first Kaohsiung and then Taichung to develop as manufacturing centers while Taipei served as a corporate, commercial, and political hub with much less polluting industry.
Allen Chen, a marine biologist at Academia Sinica and a prominent figure in Taiwan’s environmental movement, recalls growing up in Taichung before the city became heavily industrialized. “I remember the blue skies and clean air, and I never imagined that smog would become an issue there,” he says. “But now when I visit my parents in Taichung, I can hardly see blue skies anymore. In the last 20 years everything has changed.” [FULL STORY]
