Air Pollution in Hong Kong

Do you know that the air pollution in Hong Kong can be considered as serious?

What’s weird is that you probably won’t get such impression simply by looking at government’s air quality index.

Hong Kong’s air quality is not as good as the authority claimed. It may not be serious to the point where you have to wear gas mask, but you can tell by the air clarity. And if you are willing to check on some statistics, you will find that days of which visibility is less than 8 km in Hong Kong takes up about one third of a year.

Economic-wise, studies also found that the air pollution in Hong Kong contribute to 90,000 hospital admissions and 2,800 premature deaths per year. Not to mention the medical expense that have to be spent on air pollution-related disease and how the pollution drives away the potential investors…

Hong Kong’s electricity mainly comes from burning coal, together with the high vehicular emission, and let’s not go deep into the factories working day and night in the neighboring Pearl River Delta…There is no way the air quality in Hong Kong can be good.

But didn’t the government’s measuring suggest that the air pollution in Hong Kong is only mild?

Well…the Air Pollution Index (API) Hong Kong has been using from 1995 to 2013 did not measure those very small particles like PM2.5, and the standard was way outdated. While the new Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) takes these particles into account, experts criticized that it is still lagging behind the international standard (air pollution level considered as “low to moderate” when the PM2.5 reading exceeding the WHO standard) and commented that could only create a false sense of security for the public.

“Fight for the blue sky”, they said.

“All of the city should participate”, they said.

The sky in Hong Kong is still not that blue, but our future generations probably are…