Bangkok - city of fumes no more!

Kuhn Somkit Muangma (picture1) has been repairing shoes on Thanon Rama IV ever since I can remember.  Each time I see him, he is wearing his face mask. When I tell him the atmosphere in Bangkok has improved dramatically in the last few years, he smiles in disbelief.  For he suffers from bronchitis.  You can hear it when he coughs.  But he has no time to visit a doctor and he cannot afford the luxury of being ill!  For him a visit to the pharmacy must suffice.     His puen baan (neighbour picture), Weelai Khamphoon, the seamstress who usually sews my trouser legs whenever I buy a new pair, used to do the same.  Today is the first time I have seen her without a mask!  But I do not know enough Thai to ask why she has changed her mind.    

• The facts:

The statistics on the air quality of Bangkok have always been appalling.  In 1996, according to the World Health Organisation, its air quality was fourteen times (yes, I’ve got the correct figure) dirtier than the international standard.  Simply breathing was considered a health hazard to children not yet twelve years old.  Merely standing at a major junction in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Bangkok for a few minutes would leave you feeling grimy.  Each time, I visited Bangkok then I would acquire a skin rash, brought about by the atmosphere. James D Fahn, who used to be the environment editor for The Nation in Bangkok and now works at the Ford Foundation in New York, says that, under such conditions, even exercise can be hazardous to one’s health.  “Running for thirty minutes in a polluted environment is the equivalent of smoking a packet of cigarettes’.  But he argues (in his book A Land On Fire, 2003) that air pollution has a direct and dramatic effect on public health.  The World Bank argues that it is responsible for at least 200 to 400 premature deaths each year in the city.  USAID goes further:  it argues it could cause 1,400 deaths a year.       

 

• The effects:

Polluted air hits those who work on the streets especially hard:  the traffic police, and roadside vendors(picture).  They are likely to suffer from chronic respiratory problems.   But we get used to hazards over time. We even ignore their effects if we experience them long enough.  How many people do you know who have persistent coughs?  Often it seems to be a part of their personality.  They ignore the cough.  So do we.  People living in mega-cities around the world usually don’t know how many people die each day as a result of air pollution. In Jakarta, four thousand die as a result of particulates in the atmosphere.  And one and a half million suffer asthma attacks.  In China it is worse. The World Bank estimated it caused 178,000 premature deaths and 1.7 million cases of chronic bronchitis among city dwellers in 1995 (The Economist, 21 March 1998).  At the time, the World Bank estimated pollution caused $32 billion of damage.        

 

 

• The causes:

In Bangkok, there are three causes of pollution in the atmosphere. A study in The Nation (18 April 1996) found that airborne dust from vehicles caused allergies and breathing infections in more than a million people in the city.  That accounts for forty per cent of the pollution.  At the time, the city had three million motorcycles (many of them taxis) on the roads. Ninety per cent of these were two stroke engines. A further forty per cent of pollution was accounted for by construction work going on at the time.  In 1995 there were at least 3,000 construction sites in the city. I’ve never seen a construction worker wearing a mask, although on many sites there is a sign outside saying that this is a careful builder!  Many of the workers (especially those from the poorly off region of Issan)  live in camps near the site or come daily from villages outside the city.  They are used to working in grimy surroundings. The remaining 20 per cent came from the 20,000 factories in and around the city.  These are probably the most difficult to tackle, since they offer needed jobs to the people of Bangkok.  

 

In the nineties, people may have complained; journalists made good copy out of the dirt and grime, and rookie journalists would get set the task of writing a piece on Life in the Slow Lane, about the notorious traffic jams in the city, where the average speed was 12 miles an hour.  For Thailand was and still is the second largest producer of pick-up trucks (after the US) and sells Thais (at least, the rich ones) 13,000 Merks a year!  (See Philip Blenckinsop’s  The Cars That Ate Bangkok, 1997).

The car is king in Bangkok.  Between 1960 and 1993, car ownership grew roughly sixteen-fold, far more than other Asian cities (The Economist, 5 September 1998:  To Travel Hopefully).  The trouble in Bangkok is that it lacks the road space to cater for all those vehicles.  Roads, according to Fahn, account for about seven per cent of city land, compared with double or three times that in most other cities.  Anyone who is foolish enough to travel by bus or taxi through Bangkok’s China Town, Yaowarat, will know exactly what I mean when I say it is slow, slow, slow!        

 

• The good news:

But today, Bangkok breathes more easily. And many of Bangkok’s city police have thrown away their face masks.  This is thanks to some persistent campaigning ever since Dr. Bhichit Rattakul, founded the Anti Air Pollution & Environmental Protection Foundation and began campaigning in earnest. He became Governor of Bangkok from 1996 to 2000, and is credited with creating an environmental sea-change in Bangkok.  He began the crackdowns on polluting vehicles and the conversion of all (the 3 million, including the 40,000 bike-taxis) motor bikes in the city from two to the cleaner four-stroke engines, as well as such simple solutions, like washing streets to clear away construction dust. Also, he got Bangkok to ban leaded petrol in 1995, earlier than the US converted.  The plan met strong resistence of course but it was adopted. And many of Bangkok’s 14,000 buses (and taxis) have now converted to natural gas, unlike places like London and Paris.Today, Jitendra Shah, an air quality specialist with the World Bank, enjoys his job of walking around the Thai capital.  He says that most of the world’s badly polluted cities are in Asia; seven of the 10 dirtiest in China.  “No question. Bangkok is in many ways, it’s a model for the region. Walking around the streets I’ve found that breathing is definitely easier here”.

Thailand’s previous Energy Minister pointed out - “People don’t really realize the success; the air has improved a lot over the past 15 years. Some of the things you can see, but a lot of the improvement you never really notice.”  

• Transport:

The other important innovation was the introduction of the Sky Train in 1999. It took time to win acceptance, conceded ex-Governor Bhichit, but its use has since doubled.  The two lines are now being extended across the river into Thonburi, and to the south east as far as Paknam (see my earlier piece on fishing). Also, there is the underground MRT now. And  a new line connecting downtown Bangkok to the city’s new airport is already under construction, while cabinet has approved another Sky Train (BTS) line bringing outlying parts of the capital into the network. More lines are at the planning stage, so that, eventually, Bangkok will be crisscrossed with a clean and decent public transport system.  The aim is to get three million people a day using the system by 2012. But Governor Bhichit stayed in power for only one term.  He had a very hard time getting any change to happen and felt frustrated by his lack of real power to change the environment as much as he had  hoped to do.

I’ve noticed a far more pleasant atmosphere in the city, especially the huge amount of green planting (see pictures) everywhere, including the bus stops.   Greening the city has provided another dividend in the battle for clear air. Bangkok residents can now take pride in their bluer skies, something seldom seen in other cities in Asia.

• Stereotypes:

Yet stereotypes die hard. Many people still talk about the poor atmosphere in the city without realising this is no longer the case.

Ironically, even in the bad old days, the speed of traffic here was no worse than it is in London (12 miles an hour)! And, according to the 2007 World Development Indicators from the UN, London and Paris have as much pollution on their streets as does Bangkok now.

But Dhaeng, my forty-eight year old motor-bike taxi friend (picture), still suffers from headaches and streaming eyes. People like Dhaeng cannot afford to go to Bangkok’s private hospitals for proper treatment:  they simply rely on the local pharmacists to give them aspirins.  Not that aspirin is effective!

Post Script:

On re-reading the figures from the UN, I see I should not have compared the cities with each other, since the figures were not collected for that purpose. So I have deleted a previous paragraph I put above.  Instead, I quote from a report carried out in 2007 by the Stockholm Development Institute for the UNEP.

It said concentrations of the fine particulate matter PM10, which is a major health hazard, are at “serious” levels in Beijing, Dhaka, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Kathmandu, Kolkata, New Delhi and Shanghai.

The lead author of the study Dieter Schwela said the concentrations of particulates are much higher in Asia, compared to Europe or America.

In contrast, the report said Bangkok, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo have managed their air quality in an "excellent" manner, while Beijing, Busan and New Delhi have been able to tackle it in a "good" way. All these cities have been able to achieve major reductions in emissions.

Cities cited with "moderate" management capability are Colombo, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Manila and Mumbai. These cities have reduced sulphur dioxide emissions but have still to take care of transport-related emissions.

Dhaka, Hanoi, Surabaya and Kathmandu have "limited" capability. These cities will have to improve their monitoring mechanisms and work on reduction in emissions.

Finally James Fahn points out that people in the developing South are prepared to put up with a lousy environment as a sacrifice they may be willing to make to improve their incomes.  We need to remember that we in the developed North polluted our own cities horribly when we were improving our own incomes.