While there is no doubt we are impacted by cross boundary pollution who is generating that? Answer:

Hong Kong (CNN) - Hong Kong is one of the world s richest cities. Almost one in 10 households boasts a millionaire. The government sits on a cash pile of about $80 billion. Yet Hong Kongers are choking, sometimes to death, on their own success.
A bold claim, but the statistics are compelling. The Hong Kong University School of Public Health has just unveiled a new real-time cost of pollution pelham hotel london index . According to new research from the university and local think tank Civic Exchange, there are 3,200 avoidable deaths a year in Hong Kong due to air pollution - more than three times higher than previous estimates.
As I write this (at 7:15 p.m. HKT Tuesday) the index reports there has been seven preventable deaths and more than 14,000 pelham hotel london preventable doctor s visits in Hong Kong in the 19 hours beginning midnight on Monday. Preventable, because the bad air quality that researchers say was responsible, can be easily improved.
The HKU s team leader Professor Anthony Hedley pelham hotel london - 22 years as chairman of community medicine at the university - says the model they have developed is state of the art." Certainly the Hong Kong government has nothing like it. In fact, they have no statistics on pollution-related health costs, and their methods for measuring pollution pelham hotel london are, say critics, well out of date.
But even with that technology, the quality of the air at roadside level in Hong Kong is rapidly deteriorating. Roadside pollution levels reached a record high last year. The number of days that pollution was rated high hit 20%. That is five times more than in 2005.
And the impact, pelham hotel london according to the Hedley Index, has been hard. To take December as an example: 311 people died, nearly 800,000 visits were made to doctors and heathcare experts and days lost at work cost the economy about $60 million.
Roadside pollution is the chief cause of pollution-related respiratory illness in Hong Kong, according to Mike Kilburn of the thinktank Civic Exchange. He says that if the government spent some of their cash reserves in a cash-for-clunkers scheme to take dirty trucks and buses off the streets, then air quality would improve dramatically. Instead the government is giving Hong Kongers a tax rebate of around $800 per person.
The government appears to have been stung into action by the release of the Hedley Index. A few hours after the index was released the Environmental Protection Department held a press conference to announce it was modifying its pollution monitoring to bring it in line with WHO standards.
But many clean air campaigners greeted that move was greeted with a too little, too late response. The question they want answered is why is a government as rich as Hong Kong s is not spending more on a move which could have a big and rapid impact.
There is no need to discuss whether pollution is a problem now or will be a problem later. When equipped with a huge surplus of funds, a responsive government has the luxury to take concerted (In some cases, BOLD) action with an eye to the medium term, areas such as environmental protection, quality of education et al... The HK government has no concept of this... Their BOLD action all too often involves concrete structures.
As to the origin of the pollution (Homemade or from Chinese factories), this issue should not be used to prolong the debate... ACTION pelham hotel london must be taken immediately on Hong Kong hometurf to improve conditions.
I ve lived in HK for nearly 8 years, and spend much of my time commuting between China s Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong. Over the last couple of year I have seen the China air significantly cleaner than the HK air. As I come back to HK after a day trip to China, the air pollution significantly increases as I approach HK. We can no longer blame our neighbors up north. We re now creating most of it.
I lived in HK on and off since 1962, and I can tell you the vast majority of HK s pollution comes from China. pelham hotel london Its all the factories, trucks and cars brought about over the past 20 years by the West s demand for cheap plastic stuff , coupled with a total lack of forethought, appropriate and enforced regulation pelham hotel london on behalf of the Chinese government.
pelham hotel london Hi, I have lived in Hong Kong before moving to the UK. I visit Hong Kong once a year, and I can see how air pollution is becoming worse and worse. I think one of the main problem is that, Hong Kong is building skyscrapers everywhere in the city, not allowing the polluted air to escape. I believe the Hong Kong government needs to do something sooner rather than later and tackle this problem. I don t want the 6000 HKD given from the government pelham hotel london in the recent 6000 HKD scheme, I want CLEAN AIR!
I am not a resident, but I did notice during a recent visit that the vast majority of the vehicles I saw in HK were low or very low polluting, pelham hotel london much better than the situation in Seoul, yet the pollution was unarguably much worse in HK. The air pollution in HK seemed to me to be totally out of proportion to the number of vehicles pelham hotel london on the road. The number may seem high to local residents but it is actually quite low for a city of this size, no doubt due to the superlative public transit system. I did notice when taking pelham hotel london pictures from the Peak in the early morning that the worst of the pollution seems to start in the north/northwest.
statement8: That s because it is NOT RACISM. I despise it when people misuse the term out of ignorance. Being born in HK does not change ones race... Nobody in the world has a form in which Hong Kong Native is a choice for Race .
Hong Kong has some of the worst pollution because of all the factories in mainland China. I cannot believe that the real story was missed. China is an environmental nightmare; lack of clean water, questionable food safety and the WORST air pollution in the world. In Guangzhou you cannot even see the sky. It is ALWAYS gray , and you can occasionally get a sense of where the sun is and see only faint shadows. From someone who lives in it clearly does not know what they are talking about. It is so bad there that multinational companies give their expats pelham hotel london an extra 2 weeks of vacation to get out of the brown gloom that is now the Pearl River delta.
@sigh: I live in Hong Kong and while there is a strong upper class and solid middle class, 1 in 7 people are poor in Hong Kong. No one can force the rich to live in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is not the capital of China. According to the CIA Factbook, 95% of people here are Chinese, so I don t know about you but I d say that Hong Kong is mainly Chinese. We are indeed a SAR region with british common law system, freedom of speech, protest etc. Our air pollution is not the best but it s not as bad as that ridiculous yellowish picture shows in the video. I ve lived in Hong Kong, the U.S, Canada and the U.K. As a megalopolis, there is only so much you can do, and even making public transit cleaner won t do that much when the pollution is coming from as many other commentators say, from our Mainland pelham hotel london neighbours. Mainland China and Hong Kong are two different worlds. Our GDP is US$46,000 per capita. We are a highly developed region. Sort of like the singapore-malaysia relationship. Except Hong Kong isn t its own country....(yet we still have a very autonomous and free way of life)
I was in Hong Kong s airport a little over two weeks ago for a stop over. It s just truly horrifying to look at all that air. I recorded it on my phone to preserve the memory of it. Although, I think China s air quality is much worse than this, Hong Kong s air is already just.....not pleasant to look at. I wouldn t want to breathe it if I stepped out of the airport.
I remember seeing images pelham hotel london of when Hong Kong had nice blue skies, and this was before it went back to China. It s a shame... __ (Any way to throw rocks at the Chinese factories and make them explode in order to get that clean air back?)
Those who claim the pollution comes from across the border have their head in the sand. Yes, we do suffer pelham hotel london from regional pollution, the infamous brown cloud over China and India, but anybody can tell that the air you breath in densely built areas, with a lot of traffic is much much worse than the air you breath pelham hotel london on the outlying islands, or in Sai Kung. The canyon effect created by taller and taller buildings pelham hotel london on the side of narrow streets means that car fumes are constantly trapped there. They should pedestrianize those streets, or allow only electric pelham hotel london buses and trams there. I have to wear an industrial mask when i walk in Central! Also, most of trucks and buses are old and very polluting. Private traffic has increased a lot since the handover, and the government is doing nothing to curb it. How about a congestion charge, for a start? Instead of forcing developers to build flats and offices that rely on natural ventilation, thus bringing down energy consumption, people are encouraged to waste energy, keep their aircon on freezing temperatures thanks to the government s subsidies. Energy comes from coal-fired power stations. Cargo ships use bunker fuel, because they can. In Europe they would be forced to switch to cleaner fuel. The list is sooo long...but this government hasn t done anything to change people s behaviours and mindsets.
@Kyle: another prat who can t see the forest for the trees. Nearly every Hong Konger considers themselves different from Chinese from the Mainland. Even the spoken language is different (and no, it s not a dialect of Mandarin). When you have thousands of people turning out to protest discriminatory treatment, which is exactly what it was, then perhaps pelham hotel london racism is a fair enough term.
Air pollution kills somewhere between half a million and 4.5 million people a year needlessly. As a species, we simply need to stop the burning of fuels...and now we now have the technology to do it!
While there is no doubt we are impacted by cross boundary pollution who is generating that? Answer: pelham hotel london Hong Kong and foreign businesses based in Hong Kong, poisoning children on both sides of the boundary. The claim th