Cheating our own health

The statistics should scare Filipinos to their senses:

• Cars, trucks and motorcycles are the worst air polluters. Vehicles set off 58 percent of smog; factories, 40 percent; trash burning and cooking with firewood or coal, 2 percent. Diesel jeepneys, buses, trucks and SUVs, though only one of every three of 5 million registered vehicles, emit more noxious toxic smoke than gasoline cars. Two-stroke tricycles pitch in their share of killer emissions. Altogether, vehicles cause 92 percent of carbon monoxide in the metropolises of Manila, Baguio, Cebu and Davao.

• Jeepney drivers and children face gravest exposure to motor fumes. The prevalence of chronic coughing is 33 percent among jeepney drivers, the highest in persons often on the road like policemen, truckers and street vendors. The incidence of lung ailments among drivers is also highest, at 17.2 percent, compared to 9 percent among commuters. Among commuting youngsters, the prevalence of respiratory disease ranges from 5 to 27.5 percent. It’s worse among child vendors: 15.8 to 40 percent.

• Dirty air hurts not only individuals but the economy too. The harm of air pollution in the four metropolises costs dwellers P22 billion a year in medical, hospital and even funeral bills. It’s equivalent to 2.5 to 6 percent of per capita incomes in those cities, and .6 percent of the nation’s GDP.

Sadly those facts do not make air savers of most Filipinos. The Clean Air Act of 1999 forbids the burning of trash or garden waste, and the setting up of polluting backyard businesses. It requires factory owners to install air cleaners on their chimneys, and vehicle owners to have exhausts checked for yearly renewal of registrations. Yet the law, one of the strictest in the world, stands out in breaches rather than observance. From ignorance, homeowners still smoke their trees at dusk with dry grass. Residents look the other way, in misplaced deference, when a neighbor puts up a roadside car-painting shop. Factory managers break environment agreements since the cost of bribing government inspectors is lower than flue filters. Vehicle owners scout for "no show" bargains from private emission testing centers (PETCs). For an additional P200 to the usual P300-fee, they buy "passed" cards to forgo smoke checks. They know they are harming themselves and society. But what the heck. It’s like a smoker diagnosed with lung cancer but sneaking out of the doctor’s clinic for another puff.

Air particulates – dust, smog, dirt, smoke and liquid droplets – have been decreasing in the four big cities since 1995, health monitors note. It’s largely due to the introduction of low-sulfur and unleaded vehicle fuels, and the relocation of factories and power plants outside the urban zones. Still the particulate levels exceed safe standards. That is why, for their own good, vehicle owners must not rely on clean-air compliance by big oil firms alone, but on their individual contributions to clean air.

That’s easier said than done, everyone knows, with a bureaucracy as dirty as the air. The no-show offers of unscrupulous PETCs are of common knowledge to the Land Transportation Office. Yet these centers continue to operate not only by bribing branch officers into silence; some PETCs are owned by LTO men no less, layered in corporate papers but in clear conflict of interest.

There is also the perennial dilemma of populism. Succumbing to the cry of jeepney and tricycle drivers against the P300-fee of PETCs, the LTO set up its own motor vehicle inspection system (MVIS). It charges only P90, but public utility owners still are reluctant to pay. For, they feel there are no tests at all. The Asian Development Bank donated the LTO testing gear. But the MVIS units are exempt from rules governing private testers. They need not comply with the ISO (International Standardization Organization); their technicians need not be accredited by the TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority). In case of equipment breakdown, jeepneys and trikes are no longer tested but simply given the certificates of emission compliance. Even these CECs do not use the forms required of the private centers. At times it’s only scratch paper scribbled with "passed" or "failed".

A group of PETCs has offered discounted rates for public vehicles. But the LTO, one of three agencies that monitor compliance with emission testing rules, insists on running its own centers. Strange.

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This matter of purchase kickbacks from faulty textbooks by school officials continues to draw letters from readers. Antonio Barrientos Jr., information officer of the defunct Instructional Materials Development Center, laments:

"The IMDC, until converted into a government corporation and then privatized, was a success. With World Bank funding, it ran a Textbook Project with curriculum writing centers: University of the Philippines for Science and Math, Philippine Normal University for English, and the education department for Social Studies. Those were the days of quality textbooks from reputable institutions. The book-to-pupil ratio then was almost 1:1 in all subjects. Distribution to public schools was on time. Sales to private schools were at rates to cover only publishing, distribution and the salaries of 200 or so personnel. Today prices are three times higher to cover ‘incentives’ for administrators, teachers, librarians, even their secretaries and security guards.

"Prior to the WB loan, the textbook crisis was at its worst: shortage, corruption. One year into IMDC’s phase-out, we discovered that private publishers were printing books for Grade I at pocketbook sizes, instead of our prescribed 10 by 12 inches for easy reading by beginners."

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