World News: Climate change to adversely affect people's health (8 April 2014)

Climate change to adversely affect people's health

BANGALORE: There will be a serious risk of severe ill-health in the country soon. The risk of mortality and morbidity is also going to go up during periods of extreme heat, a major consequence of the ongoing climate change. 

"Climate change is certain to impact human health adversely. Many diseases which were only heard of will now start affecting the community at large," said H N Ravindranath, Centre for Sustainable Technologies, Indian Institute of Science. 

Warming, drought, flooding and precipitation are some of the very obvious changes which will be visible in the years to come, said experts gathered at the deliberation session at the Divecha Centre for Climate Change, IISC recently. Experts discussed the findings of the Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II (WG-II) findings released on March 31 this year. 

They said that local changes in temperature and rainfall have caused some change in the distribution of some water-borne illnesses and with reduced overall food production, the Indian population will only be more vulnerable. 

"Climate change will lead to increase in ill-health in many regions, especially in the developing countries with low income," said Aromar Revi, director, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore. And to prepare for such 'risks' countries need to introduce a new set of policies to supplement the existing policies, felt experts. 

"But that calls for a huge funding. The big question is where the money will flow in from considering that developing countries need to build an extra set of policies to mitigate risks," said Purnamita Dasgupta of the Institute for Economic Growth, New Delhi. 

Many terrestrial, freshwater and marine species have shifted their geographic ranges, seasonal activities, migration patterns, abundance and species interaction in response to the ongoing climate change.

source from: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/Climate-change-to-adversely-affect-peoples-health/articleshow/33338737.cms

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Malaysia News: Water rationing takes toll on health, environment (13 April 2014)

MALAYSIA

Water rationing takes toll on health, environment

Water rationing has created a spike in the use of polystyrene plates and cups.. — Picture by Choo Choy May- See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/water-rationing-takes-toll-on-health-environment#sthash.9dYf5Ixc.dpuf

PETALING JAYA, April 13 — Residents of Klang Valley may whine and moan about the lack of water at home due to the rationing exercises but its impact goes beyond just their daily discomfort. - See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/water-rationing-takes-toll-on-health-environment#sthash.9dYf5Ixc.dpuf

The ongoing water rationing was brought on by an unusually long dry season, which is said to be caused by climate change.

In coping with it, people could just be making things worse for the environment and themselves. On top of the list is a spike in the use of polystyrene plates and cups to save water.

Deputy Natural Resources and Environment Minister, Datuk Dr James Dawos Mamit, said polystyrene affects people’s health as well as the environment.

He said polystyrene packaging should not be used in the first place, and encouraged businesses to switch to plates and cutleries made from oil palm trunk fibres as they were more eco-friendly and a biodegradable alternative.

He pointed out that the environmental ministry had conducted road shows to inform the public about the hazards of polystyrene, but the public does not seem to care.

- See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/water-rationing-takes-toll-on-health-environment#sthash.9dYf5Ixc.dpuf

“The public take food packaging for granted, which primarily affects their health and eventually, the environment,” he said.

Global Environment Centre River Care coordinator, Kalithasan Kailasam, said although it was good that businesses have thought of a short-term solution to deal with the water rationing, they need to look at the bigger picture.

He advised businesses to better plan their water storage to reduce the usage of disposable cutleries.

“Biodegradable cutleries are a better solution, but it is not the best as it still becomes waste,” he said.

Kalithasan also felt that one of the issues people have to deal with is not having enough clean water.

“People need to understand that rivers with high concentration of pollutants cannot be treated and they need to keep in mind the long-term effects.”

He said 97 per cent of Malaysia’s water supply comes from rivers, and if rivers are not treated with care, they might lose their main source of water.

He added that 58 per cent of local rivers are categorised as clean, 34 per cent as slightly polluted and seven per cent as completely polluted.

Stephanie Evers, environmental science assistant professor of University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, said that with climate change, different countries react differently. Usually, the wet gets wetter while the dry, drier.

She said unusual weather patterns are not only affecting Malaysia, but taking place all over the globe.

Evers added that there is strong evidence which suggests human activities have contributed to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and climate change.

“When there is an increased concentration of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it acts as a barrier to heat escaping the earth,” she said, which explains the hotter days in the country.

- See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/water-rationing-takes-toll-on-health-environment#sthash.9dYf5Ixc.dpuf

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Japan News: Result of the Medical Judgment Concerning Acknowledgment of Designated Diseases under the Act on Asbestos Health Damage Relief. (10 March, 2014)

Result of the Medical Judgment Concerning Acknowledgment of Designated Diseases under the Act on Asbestos Health Damage Relief. (On March 10th, 2014)

Result of the Medical Judgment Concerning Acknowledgment of Designated Diseases under the Act on Asbestos Health Damage Relief. (On March 10th, 2014)

*Please see the attached file.

Attached File:

• Result of the Medical Judgment Concerning Acknowledgment of Designated Diseases under the Act on Asbestos Health Damage Relief.(On March 10th 2014)

sourec from: http://www.env.go.jp/en/headline/headline.php?serial=2065

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Vietnam News: Aluminum recycling seriously affects people’s health (18 Feb 2014)

Aluminum recycling seriously affects people’s health 

Thứ ba, ngày 18 tháng 02 năm 2014 cập nhật lúc 10:44

The people in Nam Truc district of Nam Dinh province, who earn their living by recycling aluminum, are exchanging their futures for the daily bread.

The aluminum recycling has been “imported” to the locality for a short period, but it has been growing so rapidly, simply because the job brings high income to local people.

However, the strong development of the handicraft also means the more alarming environment pollution.

According to the Nam Dinh provincial Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, the process of collecting aluminum from beer cans discharges some 40 tons of solid hazardous waste every day. Meanwhile, the waste water generated by the product cleaning could be up to 500 cubic meters per day.

The hazardous waste has been discharged directly to the villages’ sewers, roads, fields, or the local canals. Therefore, no creature can survive here for many years recently.

The paths and houses of the Binh Yen aluminum recycling village all produce a bad odor and terrible noise. Here the sewers all look milky because of the big amount of precipitated sulfuric acid.

The precipitated sulfuric acid looks solid, but in fact, it is flabby, thus causing canals and sewers to be stuck, blocking the water streams.

According to Bui Binh Minh, deputy head of the Binh Yen Village, there were only four households in the village recycling aluminum in 1989, with the materials brought from Van Chang commune or Bac Ninh province.

However, the number of households earning their living with this job has been increasing rapidly: 269 out of the 570 households in the village now recycle aluminum.

In fact, local people have been aware of the high risks they face when doing the job. However, they still have to do the job for daily bread.

Therefore, Dang Ngoc Ben, Head of the Binh Yen Village, admitted that it is impossible to eliminate the aluminum recycling village, because it brings money to people.

“What we want is to relocate the craft village to another place far away from residential quarters,” Ben said. “Only by that time, will we have fresh air to breathe.”

The polluting aluminum recycling village has been a hot potato to the Nam Dinh provincial authorities over the last many years. The provincial people’s committee funded the VND3 billion project on dumping and treating solid waste from the Binh Yen village.

Under the project, financial support was given to help local households build manholes, plastics tanks to put solid waste and labor protection tools

However, the project was not really effective partially because of the overly high construction cost and the people’s low responsibility for environmental protection.

According to Nguyen Van Ngoan, Chair of the Tam Thanh Commune People’s Committee, the canals in Binh Yen village cannot be dredged because it is unclear where to throw the waste mud. Meanwhile, the serious pollution has narrowed the area of land ready for agriculture production.

Meanwhile, Director of the Nam Dinh provincial department of natural resources and the environment--Vu Minh Luong, admitted that the local authorities have become powerless in dealing with the problem in Binh Yen.

source from: 

http://www.monre.gov.vn/v35/default.aspx?tabid=675&CateID=58&ID=131640&Code=9JLX131640

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Book: Public Health in International Investment Law and Arbitration (8 Feb 2014)

Public Health in International Investment Law and Arbitration

By Valentina Vadi

Routledge – 2012

Description:

Is a State free to adopt measures to protect the public health of its citizens? If so, what are the limits, if any, to such regulatory powers? This book addresses these questions by focusing on the clash between the regulatory autonomy of the state and international investment governance. As a wide variety of state regulations allegedly aimed at protecting public health may interfere with foreign investments, a tension exists between the public health policies of the host state and investment treaty provisions. Under most investment treaties, States have waived their sovereign immunity, and have agreed to give arbitrators a comprehensive jurisdiction over what are essentially regulatory disputes. Some scholars and practitioners have expressed concern regarding the magnitude of decision-making power allocated to investment treaty tribunals.

This book contributes to the current understanding of international investment law and arbitration, addressing the fundamental question of whether public health has and/or should have any relevance in contemporary international investment law and policy. With a focus on the ‘clash of cultures’ between international investment law and public health, the author critically analyses the emerging case law of investment treaty arbitration and considers the theoretical interplay between public health and investor rights in international investment law. The book also explores the interplay between investment law and public health in practice, focusing on specific sectors such as pharmaceutical patents, tobacco regulation and environmental health. It then goes on to analyze the available means for promoting consideration of public health in international investment law and suggests new methods and approaches to better reconcile public health and investor rights.

Content:

Introduction Part 1: Foreign Direct Investments and Public Health: Defining and Connecting the Two Fields 1. International Investment Law 2. Public Health in Contemporary International Law and Policy 3. The Interplay between Public Health and Foreign Direct Investments Part 2: The Interplay of Foreign Investment and Public Health in Practice 4. Access to Medicines and International Investment Law: Pharmaceutical Patents as Investments 5. Trademark Protection v. Tobacco Control in International Investment Law 6. The Environmental Health Spillovers of Foreign Direct Investment in International Investment LawPart 3: Reconciling Public Health with Investor Rights in International Investment Law 7. Reconciling Public Health with Investors’ Rights in International Investment Law: Substantive Aspects 8. Conclusions

source from : http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138025233/

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Seminars: Atmosphere-biosphere Interactions: Impacts of Global Environmental Change on Air Quality, Food Security and Public Health organized by CUHK on 12 Sep 2013

Atmosphere-biosphere Interactions: Impacts of Global Environmental Change on Air Quality, Food Security and Public Health 

Date: 12/9/2013

Venue: Room 233, Wong Foo Yuan Building, Chung Chi College

Time: 16:30 - 1800

For more information: http://www.grm.cuhk.edu.hk/eng/news/deptseminar/Seminar20130912.pdf

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Updates: Outdoor Air Pollution among Top Global Health Risks in 2010 by Health Effects Institute, USA (13 Dec 2012)

Outdoor Air Pollution among Top Global Health Risks in 2010

Risks Especially High in Developing Countries of Asia

A new systematic analysis of all major global health risks has found that outdoor air pollution in the form of fine particles is a much more significant public health risk than previously known − contributing annually to over 3.2 million premature deaths worldwide and over 74 million years of healthy life lost. It now ranks among the top global health risk burdens.
The analysis – the 2010 Global Burden of Disease (GBD 2010) – is being published on 15 December in a special issue of the leading British medical journal The Lancet. It applies consistent methods to the largest global database ever assembled to estimate risks of premature mortality and contributions to global health burden[1] from a wide variety of risks: smoking, diet, alcohol, HIV AIDS, household and outdoor air pollution, and many more. For the first time it places outdoor air pollution among the top 10 risks worldwide and among the top five or six risks in the developing countries of Asia. It documents as well that household air pollution from the burning of solid fuels is responsible for a substantial burden of disease in low- and middle income countries.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Chulha-smoke-choking-Indian-women-kids/articleshow/17605667.cms

This new analysis identifies especially high risk levels in the developing countries of Asia where air pollution levels are the highest in the world. Overall GBD 2010 estimates over 2.1 million premature deaths and 52 million years of healthy life lost in 2010 due to ambient fine particle air pollution, fully 2/3 of the burden worldwide. Among other risk factors studied in the GBD, outdoor air pollution ranked 4th in mortality and health burden in East Asia (China and North Korea) where it contributed to 1.2 million deaths in 2010, and 6th in South Asia (including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) where it contributed to 712,000 deaths in 2010. The analysis found that reducing the burden of disease due to air pollution in Asia will require substantial decreases in the high levels of air pollution in those regions.

“The study’s findings … suggest that a large burden of disease in many parts of the world is attributable to particulate matter pollution, which is substantially higher than estimated in previous analyses,” reported The Lancet (Lim et al 2012)

Earlier GBD assessments reported much smaller air pollution-related burdens of disease. Air pollution’s increased importance in this 2010 update results from two major factors:
First, new global estimates of particulate air pollution exposure in both urban and rural areas, based on ground-level measurements and satellite remote sensing and global chemical transport models, were able to much better capture full population exposure.

Second, a new detailed analysis of the relationship between outdoor levels of air pollution and effects on mortality and illness – based on the latest health effects research - resulted in significantly increased estimates of effects for each incremental increase in pollution.

Because exposure to air pollution affects cardiovascular disease and other leading causes of disease and death worldwide, the global burden of disease due to air pollution is substantial.

“There is a wide range of risks that affect global health,” said Bob O’Keefe, Vice President of the Health Effects Institute[2] and Chair of Clean Air Asia. “However this landmark analysis places air pollution among the top risk factors in the world today with the greatest impacts among people in the developing countries of Asia, underscoring the need for effective action to reduce exposure.
 
The 2010 GBD was produced by a rigorous scientific process involving over 450 global experts and led by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington along with its partner institutions: the World Health Organization, the University of Queensland, Australia, Johns Hopkins University, and Harvard University. Its extensive analysis was subjected to detailed peer review to ensure the highest quality of analysis, and a consistent and comparable approach to ensure that the many risk factors could be assessed using the same techniques. Within the larger GBD project, the outdoor air pollution analyses were conducted by an international team led by Dr. Aaron Cohen of Health Effects Institute and Dr. H Ross Anderson of St. Georges, University of London.

GBD 2010 is being released as part of a Symposium sponsored by IHME and The Lancet at the Royal Society in London on 14 December 2012. For further information on the air pollution analysis contact Bob O’Keefe (+1 617 488 2311 rokeefe@healtheffects.org ) or Aaron Cohen (acohen@healtheffects.org )

[1] Global Health Burden is measured in terms of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) which can be defined as the number of healthy years of life lost from various risks.
[2] The Health Effects Institute is an independent, non-profit research institute funded jointly by the US Environmental Protection Agency, industry, foundations and development banks to provide credible, high quality science on air pollution and health for air quality decisions.

Attachment: Press Release - Global Burden of Disease - HEI
Size: 271.11 KB

Source: http://cleanairinitiative.org/portal/node/11507

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Publication: Civic Exchange's Submission on environmental policies for 2013 Policy Address Consultation

Civic Exchange urges HKSAR Government to take swift actions for improving air quality and protecting public health, in line with Audit Commission’s recommendations
DATE: 14 Nov 2012 

HONG KONG: Wednesday, 14 November 2012 – Civic Exchange welcomes Audit Commission’s Report No.59 (the Report) dated 26 October 2012 and released today, in particular Chapters 1 and 2 on “Monitoring and reporting of air quality” and “Implementation of air-quality improvement measures”, respectively. This is a timely report for the new administration to consider as they are preparing for their air quality management strategy and plan, as well as a welcome reminder about how much works still need to be done in Hong Kong to deliver clean air to our people and to protect public health.

Managing Air Quality Objectives

Audit Commission’s Report highlights HKSAR Government’s past inadequacies in managing Hong Kong’s air quality objectives (AQOs) and in setting new AQOs that would protect public health (Chapter 1, Part 2). Civic Exchange argues that it is indisputable that Hong Kong’s AQOs must use the World Health Organization’s Air Quality Guidelines as our long-term goal. It is also extremely important that, as recommended by the Report, time targets and milestones must be set for achieving the AQOs as soon as possible, which is contrary to HKSAR Government’s past approach to achieve the AQOs as soon as reasonably practicable. Regular reviews should also be made in future to revise our AQOs for driving further improvement of our air quality, but not to be constrained by worries of non-compliance.

Administering Air Pollution Index

Administration of air pollution index (API) is also considered in the report as unsatisfactory (Chapter 1, Part 3). Indeed, Civic Exchange has been constantly calling for the government to make the API a better system for communicating air quality information and its associated health risks to the population. With the imminent implementation of the new AQOs, the HKSAR Government should also take this opportunity to revamp their API system for enhanced communication with the public.

Measures on Vehicles and Ships

Chapter 2 of the Audit Commission’s Report focuses on the air quality improvement measures. Civic Exchange agrees with the Report’s recommendations that efforts need to be made by the HKSAR Government in cutting emissions from vehicles, ships, power plants, and non-road mobile machinery, as well as stepping up collaboration in regional air quality management with Guangdong. Among the major local emission sources, priorities must be given to clean-up the diesel commercial vehicles and ship.

Simon Ng, Head of Transport and Sustainability Research of Civic Exchange, explains, “roadside air quality has been getting worse, and one key measure is to get the old and polluting diesel commercial vehicles off the road. On the other hand, ships have become the biggest emitter of respirable suspended particulates (36%) and nitrogen oxides (32%), and the second biggest emitter of sulphur dioxide (48%). Regulations are badly required for the control of ship emissions such as the use of low sulphur fuel at berth. In the long run, an emission control area should be set up in Pearl River Delta waters to maximize emission reduction and public health improvement.”

Inter-department and Cross-bureau collaboration

Last, but not least, Civic Exchange recognizes that the Environment Bureau (ENB) and the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) cannot deliver clean air to Hong Kong on their own, without the support of other government departments and policy bureaux. For example, the Report questions the slow progress in implementing bus route rationalization in the past. To achieve better progress in the future, it requires collaboration among ENB, EPD, Transport Department and the District Councils. Also, we need Health Department’s support if the main objective of our air quality management plan is to improve public health.

Measurable Improvement versus Marginal Gain

“Air pollution in Hong Kong is so worrying that we must go for policies and measures that would not just bring marginal difference, but substantial and measurable improvement in air quality and public health,” Ng exclaims. “It would require a new mindset, sheer determination, bold actions, collaboration within government, as well as support from the Legislature and society. It is heartening that ENB and EPD have acknowledged all the recommendations listed in the Report, and it is time to put promises into actions.”

Download document:

Civic Exchange’s Submission on environmental policies for 2013 Policy Address Consultation:

• http://www.civic-exchange.org/wp/2013env_consultation_en (English)
• http://cht.civic-exchange.org/wp/2013env_consultation_cn (Chinese)

For more information: http://www.civic-exchange.org/wp/121114pr_en/

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