Huge North-South Air Pollution Gap: Yunlin Pollution Nearly a Thousand Times Higher Than Taipei; Environmental Groups Rally for Feb 19 Street Protest
The Taiwan Healthy Air Action Alliance (hereafter referred to as the Alliance) held a press conference this morning, pointing out that according to statistics from the Environmental Protection Administration, people in Taichung, Yunlin and Kaohsiung are "allocated" nearly a thousand times more air pollution than those in Taipei. This figure has increased markedly compared with 2014, leading to the deformed situation of a "blue north, black south" appearing again and again. The new government's call to be "humble, humble, and once more humble" has become "a thousand times, a thousand times, and once more a thousand times" when it comes to air pollution, he said, urging the government to face the problem squarely.
Alliance chairman Yeh Kuang-peng said that for air pollution indicators including PM2.5, sulfur oxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO), according to per capita figures released by the Environmental Protection Administration in 2014, PM2.5 levels in Taichung, Yunlin and Kaohsiung were 63, 97 and 85 times those of comparatively less polluted Taipei. Now they have expanded to 82, 121 and 129 times.
In addition, this year the Alliance also calculated figures based on industrial emission data for each county and city compiled by the Environmental Protection Administration, and found that gaseous pollutants such as sulfur oxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO) in Taichung reached 424 to 579 times; gaseous pollutants in Kaohsiung reached 598 to 875 times; and in Yunlin County, the most polluted area, gaseous pollutants were as much as a thousand times those of Taipei. Yeh Kuang-peng therefore joked that Tsai Ing-wen's slogan had become "a thousand times, a thousand times, and once more a thousand times."
The Alliance further pointed out that Taiwan's sky, divided by the Daan River, shows "blue in the north and black in the south," just like the lyrics of the theme song of the 1966 classic film "Blue and Black": "What era is this? What kind of society is this? Why give us blue, and then also give us black?" In 2017, the sky over western Taiwan has turned into one side, one country, causing children in central and southern Taiwan to be more prone to allergies and asthma from birth; their childhood is a childhood of masks.
The Alliance therefore called on the government to have the president quickly form an "Air Pollution Prevention and Anti-Warming Action Group" to face the air pollution problem with a high-standard, comprehensive attitude, and to consider amending the Air Pollution Control Act. At the same time, the Alliance also stressed that on the 19th it will hold simultaneous "Feb 19 Anti-Air Pollution Marches" in Taichung and Kaohsiung, calling on the public to come out in large numbers to fight for "equal breathing rights" and "equal health rights."
