Air Pollution - Will it harm my child?

[Petesy]

I understand the current severe pollution in HK is a relatively new phenomena. Like diseases such as lung cancer, it may take several decades of 'severe' exposure to pollution for the full impact to be realised, and to impact on life expectancy. To be honest I think the analysis is lacking some rigour.

Pollution was much worse when I was a kid (late 70s - early 80s). Back then you could actually smell the acid in the air in industrial areas like Kwun Tong or Lai Chi Kok.

We have always had pollution in here since the industrial boom in the 50s. It's just that after a relatively clean 90's the pollution is picking up again now.

[Expatriate]

You can see it like this:

People use car exhaust to kill themselves.

The nazis used car exhaust to kill the sick and the disabled.
(It took too long, so they switched to cyanide later)

[ontheroad]

Just for measure, don't judge a place by its cover, pollution wise : Sydney has one of the highest number of asthma sufferers in the world, and in fact, we've lived in many big cities (NY, London, Paris) and our asthma was at it worst, by far, in Sydney...we've been here less than a week so I can't judge on the air quality here... but from what I'm seeing, the south of the island seems pretty pollution free...

[Alvin2010]

yet, the life expectancy is still increasing and is expected to overtake japan in 2030. lung diseases have mroe to do with personal habits such as smoking than the air pollution. personally, i dun think the air pollution is that bad at all. is it really that bad?
i can't notice any difference between hk and boston.
yet, in hk, the diet is much healthier, and that is a much bigger factor imho.

i would say more than 90 percent of the world's population lives in a much more polluted environment than that of hong kong without even clean water or food. the majority of the world still lives in developing countries.

yet, air pollution isn't just a problem to hong kong. you are talking like hk is the only place with that problem and the rest of the world doesn't. the world will judge hk on this and that as other people are the standards and judges.

have u ever driven in los angeles/nyc with windows open?

well, if you wanna compare hk to say, greenfield, massachusetts. yeah, i would say greenfield, massachusetts has much less air pollution. yet, they haven't benefited from this financially as well as biologically. they have the highest unemployment rate in the state of ma and the us does not have the highest life expectancy. many people blame the diet as the major factor.

Speaking as a Canadian who's lived in HKG for 4 years, I'd say the air here is better than Beijing but not as good as it can and should be. The main problem, as I see it, is that the government here is doing little or nothing to stop the air from getting worse. Their idea of a highly-publicized clean-air campaign is nothing more than a smoking ban in public areas, which isn't really the point when on a daily basis you still see public buses pumping out black fumes on the road. I personally think life expectancy rate is deceiving as a measurement of how clean the air is, since not all respiratory diseases are necessarily lethal. We should be looking precisely at longitudinal studies on the rates and varieties of lung-related diseases in Hong Kong, which I bet, isn't getting any better.

[PDLM]

So how much more are you (and all the other bus users) prepared to pay for your ride in order to pay for replacing all the pre-EuroV buses within, say, 12 months?

Regrettably, I suspect that if you tell people that bus fares will need to go up by, say 50% to do this then public opinion would be clearly against it.

[Expatriate]

its population also has the highest average iq of 107 in the world.

if people can live that long with a high iq, there's nothing for u to worry about.

Was that sarcastic?

The average IQ of a population is by definition 100. If it is higher, then it is fake. Just like the API which is lower in HK and China than in real life.

File:IQ curve.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[jgl]

Was that sarcastic?

The average IQ of a population is by definition 100. If it is higher, then it is fake. Just like the API which is lower in HK and China than in real life.

File:IQ curve.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You're arguing with a point that was posted in 2006.

Oh, and you're failing to understand some pretty basic ideas about statistics and measurement.