Haze and our (uncaring) habits

Unlike today, the children of my generation experienced clear skies, occurring as regularly as the sunrise and sunset, unless it was the rainy season, of course.
I remember the solitary hours when I would lie on my back, mesmerized by the various cloud formations, identifying their kind and second guessing what the weather would be like that day. Jets from then Mactan Air Base would appear and obscure the vision, stopping the reverie, leaving one to pray that the pilots would be safe in pursuing their mission.
During summer break, we made and flew our kites, which dotted the atmosphere with their various sizes, shapes and hues.
Those were also the days when it was common to see hawks soaring like there was no tomorrow. Now, you don’t see them at all, or flocks of birds, for that matter.
Times have changed decades after. The birds have vanished from the heavens, through no fault of their own. Their habitats had been destroyed largely in the name of “progress”.
Sadly, humanity’s fossil-fuel dependent lifestyles have contaminated the air that previously provided our avian friends the healthy space to conquer their world.
When Henry David Thoreau thanked God that “men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth,” he did not foresee the possibility, that even if we do not fly, we have managed to dirty the air, not just the land and our seas, no thanks to our carbon-emitting habits.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, a most famous oceanographer, spoke the truth in saying that “Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”
It is a sad reality that haze has shrouded our world, evidence of a clear imbalance in the natural system. Haze and smoke mean one thing: pollution with its dangerous consequences to the health of constituents and our home planet.
Residents in Singapore, Malaysia and Jakarta have to put on masks to avoid breathing in small particles from the smog, attributed, they say, to the forest fires in Indonesia.
Cebu, just like Metro Manila, is not exempt. The news of haze enveloping Cebu did not surprise me a bit. It was bound to grow worse. Apart from the continuing lack of a functioning policy-making body, the Metro Cebu Air Shed Board, we do not measure or if we do, we do not even share the result of air quality monitoring that government is required to do, with our people. Nor, unfortunately, do we demand to know the facts from the government. Takes two to tango, right?
However, it is clear, we are guaranteed the right to breathe fresh air under Republic Act 8749, the Clean Air Act of 1999. Likewise, under this law, “we have the right to be informed of the nature and extent of the potential hazard of any activity, undertaking or project and to be served timely notice of any significant rise in the level of pollution and the accidental or deliberate release into the atmosphere of harmful or hazardous substances”.
But, according to the news reported in Cebu Daily News (Oct. 3, 2015), an Environment Management Bureau official says that “Results will be out next week”. Not fast and timely enough, don’t you think?
Tell that to the children and the elderly, the men and women who develop “respiratory diseases (including asthma and changes in lung function), cardiovascular diseases, adverse pregnancy outcomes (such as preterm birth), and even death,” arising from air pollution. In 2013, the World Health Organization concluded that outdoor air pollution is “carcinogenic to humans.”
“Outdoor air pollution involves exposures that take place outside of the built environment. Examples include: Fine particles produced by the burning of fossil fuels (i.e. the coal and petroleum used in traffic and energy production), Noxious gases (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, chemical vapors, etc.), Ground-level ozone (a reactive form of oxygen and a primary component of urban smog) and Tobacco smoke.” (See the website of the National Institute of Health www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/air-pollution).
Meanwhile, we need to also ask ourselves if we are doing our share to minimize the air pollution that surrounds us.
Are we planting trees and do we preserve our mangroves and seagrass that absorb the polluting carbon dioxide?
Are we doing something about the volume of vehicles that are given license to operate even if clearly the road-carrying capacity and air-emission level have been breached?
Are we willing to change our lifestyle and practice carpooling or walk or bike, to reduce our carbon footprint?
Equally as important, are we engaged citizens who actively participate in decision-making on policies and projects that impact the quality of our lives and those of our children and their children?
Indeed, my friends, participation is the key to solutions and reforms.

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