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By Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter
For years, whenever one wanted to escape the polluted air in Metro
Manila, Baguio City with its fresh mountain air was a favorite
destination. This may no longer be so.
The Environmental Management Bureau of the
Department of Environment and Natural Resources reported last year
that air in Baguio City is now among the worst in the country. If
air pollution has become a health hazard in Baguio City, then much
worse is to be expected in urban cities where smog had been a bane
of daily life. Ironically, the worsening of air pollution in the
Summer Capital and elsewhere came after the enactment of the Clean
Air Act.
The authors of the Clean Air Act or Republic Act
8749, with strong pressure from environmentalists, produced a piece
of legislation that is supposed to purify the air we breathe. To
realize this, the law imposed stringent regulations and imposed
stiff sanctions on violators. Unfortunately, the ideal was never
realized, the stringent regulations were virtually unimplemented
and the sanctions, almost completely ignored.
The legislators recognized that motor vehicles,
especially those using diesel fuel, are the main cause of air
pollution in urban centers. To minimize the emission of toxic fumes
on the streets, the Clean Air Act directed that no motor vehicle
shall be registered unless it passes the emission-testing standards.
The law also sets norms on the use of benzene and aromatics for
unleaded gasoline to further lessen air pollution.
The Clean Air Act states that smoke belchers
will be impounded, their license plates removed pending compliance
with standards, and fined. A third offense is punishable by one-year
suspension of the motor vehicle registration and fined up to P6,000.
If the smoke emission test is zealously applied, then there should
be no smoke belchers to impound or to fine. So, the nation,
especially Metro Manila, should be thankful for the law, but why is
it that hundreds of smoke belchers, mostly buses, merrily find their
way into the streets unmolested?
The prevalence of smoke belchers despite the
enactment of the Clean Air Act bespeaks of the strong political
muscle of the transportation sector. This muscle is definitely
stronger than the political will of the regulators. The
transportation sector flexed this muscle when regulators tried to
enforce a provision of the Clean Air Act phasing out seven-year-old
buses. It was established that the older the engine is, the less
efficient it becomes in burning fuel so it contributes more air
pollution. Thus, regulators decided to keep them off the streets in
compliance with the law. This was good on paper only, however,
because when the regulators tried to implement the phase-out
operators and drivers threatened to stage a strike. Today, decrepit
buses continue to ply the streets, a testament to their stature as
being outside the pale of the law.
Burning issue
One of the most controversial provisions of the
Clean Air Act pertains to the ban on incinerators. The act also
states that existing incinerators dealing with biomedical waste
should be phased out within three years after the law came into
effect.
A month ago, when hospitals were about to go on
a “holiday,” hospital administrators cited the ban on
incinerators as one of the reasons for the growing unprofitability
of running hospitals. They said many hospitals had invested millions
of pesos in buying incinerators to dispose of hospital wastes, but
these are now lying idly because the law prohibits its use.
The hospital administrators did not say how they
were disposing of their medical, pathological and pharmaceutical
wastes without incineration. Medical wastes are materials generated
as a result of patient diagnosis, treatment or immunization of human
beings or animals. Pathological wastes include all human tissue
whether infected or not, such as limbs, organs, fetuses and body
fluid, animal carcasses and tissue from laboratories, together with
all related swabs and dressings. Pharmaceutical wastes consist of
drugs and chemicals that have been spilled or sold, are expired or
contaminated, or are to be discarded for any reason.
A recent television documentary gave an
explanation on where the medical wastes may have been disposed
of—in garbage dumps. The documentary showed footages of hospital
wastes being found in supposed sanitary landfills, and a number of
them could have been used on patients treated for highly infectious
diseases.
The dumpsites themselves mirror the utter
helplessness of the government in enforcing the Clean Air Act. The
Smokey Mountain in Tondo may be gone but a score of others had
sprouted despite the law’s ban on open dumpsites. The so-called
sanitary landfills envisioned by the law are not the landfills in
existence which are nothing but open dumpsites. And while the law
prohibits the use of incinerators, there is continuing burning of
waste materials left behind by the scavengers, thus further fouling
up the air for miles around the dumpsites.
Clearly, the Clean Air Act is Exhibit Number 1
for the argument that the best of legislative intentions does not
always work well in the real world. Between the law’s intent and
its actual implementation is a great divide.
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