The next big issue - air pollution

It might not even be something to be expected in the future because we may be already there without realizing it.  If there are no regular and consistent monitoring of its metrics, it will be just so easy to wake up one day to a city full of smoke and smog you'd wish you're out there in the province and rural areas.  Except that you can't, you work and live here and have to endure the threatening air, while navigating to the horrendous traffic and menacing flood.

We have tried to rationalize the statement of Dan Brown's Inferno referring to Manila as the "Gates of Hell" in a series of articles last year.  Traffic jams and air pollution were part of it, and the only reason why Brown skipped the flood issue may be because the latter is so common to most choking cities it no longer stands out.  But the three often come together, and if the air portion of the troika is not yet noticeable in Cebu, it will soon be.  It inevitably follows traffic jams.

We need to be prudent to establish the difference between plain air pollution issue and global warning/climate change caused by greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions.  To a certain extent, these are similar to each other and maybe lumped as one issue but the specific "chemical" elements are different.  GHG refers to a specific list of gases and emissions which cause global warming while air pollution is confined to dust and particles not necessarily causing an increase in the earth's temperature.  But let's just lump them together here.

The other particular difference is maybe due to the fact that the global warming issue is, ... well, global - what GHG is emitted affects the entire earth, while air pollution is local in nature.  That's why the latter is attached to the traffic issue.  Air pollution is caused mainly by the combustion (burning) of matter which releases carbon dioxide (and monoxide) and carbon particulate matters.  The latter is categorized by their (minute) sizes.  For example PM10 is a particle suspended in the air and which has a diameter of 10 micrometers.

But what most people don't know (making it ominously dangerous) is from where the particulate matter come from.  Of course, ordinary burning contributes to the total but most will readily blame smokestacks of industrial factories as the main culprit.  And it really is a concern which needs to be addressed.  But the stark reality if we are to measure air pollution is that around 70% of it come from mobile sources.  The factories are stationary sources, and guess what the mobile sources are? - from the transportation sector, in the form of smoke coming out of the burning of fuel in gas combustion engines.  I repeat - around 70%!

Try to imagine how it is.  If it took you 30 minutes to travel from the airport to Fuente Osmeña 3 years ago, and it takes you an hour now, it means that your vehicles engine burned fuel twice longer.  Even if you give an allowance for the slightly higher burning for higher speeds, the stop and go will just about even it out and you pollute twice as much as before.  Traffic jams inevitably pollute much more in times of traffic congestion compared to ordinary traffic congestion.  That is the simple ugly truth.  And we are not even talking about inefficient engines!

If we do, we will soon wake up to a smoke-filled city.  At least, emission tests are deemed required once when we register our cars.  But who checks emission levels the rest of the year?  If it is being done at all.  Look around.  Maybe it's time someone addresses these issues.  Unless you want the inside of the nose to be black with soot when you get home in the evening after a hard day's work.