Torontonians are worried about the air they breathe. An Oracle research survey of 1,000 city dwellers found a whopping 75 per cent think that air pollution is affecting their health now and 82 per cent think it will endanger it in the future.
“The concern is highly justified,” said U of T professor and smog expert Miriam Diamond. Along with ten graduate students, Diamond looks at toxic chemicals and how they move around cities. She notes many studies have shown the link between smog and illness—even death.
Last year, the City of Toronto put out “Moving Towards Better Air,” a report that found approximately 1,000 people died earlier than expected because of air pollution.
“That’s deaths,” said Diamond. “The number of people who are alive who have experienced problems like respiratory infections, cardiac illness [linked to carbon monoxide]…is much greater than that.
She notes this has major costs, perhaps best shown by the 9,800 people who are admitted to the hospital and 1,300 people who make emergency room visits due to the effects of air pollution in Ontario each year.
“For Toronto, the improvement of air quality is almost a no-brainer. If we got the cars off the roads we would have improved air quality. The province and the federal government, instead of promoting public transportation, has reduced or eliminated their investment in good air quality through public transit,” said Diamond. According to the poll, commissioned by the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, 46 per cent said they thought the city is doing a poor job controlling air pollution. The federal government had 48 per cent non-supporters for their pollution efforts and 55 per cent thought that the province was doing poorly.
“If you look back over, particularly since 1995, what you see is a series of initiatives which one would be hard pressed to come up with a better plan to make air quality worse if you were trying,” said Pembina Institute rep and U of T professor Mark Winfield, who also focuses on air quality issues. He reeled off the provincial government’s recent harmful endeavours, which include enormous cuts to the Ministry of Environment, disposing of land use planning rules to reduce urban sprawl and approval of the nuclear asset optimization plan which would have allowed Ontario Hydro to bring coal fire plants back on line.
“All of this undermines our credibility when we try to say to the Americans, ‘gee, can you do something about your sources of smog,'” said Winfield.
He did say that initiatives in the past few months have proved that the government is attempting to respond to public outcry. These include the smart growth strategy, emission limits on coal fire power plants and new money into public transit. But according to Winfield, the government’s lack of a coherent strategy will do them in.
“I think the real problem is that in some ways the government does not really understand the connection between issues like air quality and land use and transportation and energy. It just doesn’t see those kind of connections and sees the issues in complete isolation from one another.”
Smog Facts
The chemicals that make up smog come from many sources:
Nitrogen oxides (NOx): The major source is gasoline-powered vehicles (about 66%). Much of the rest is from industrial combustion processes (generation, smelters, primary metal processing).
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs): from evaporation of gasoline, oil-based paint and cleaning solvents. The major source is gasoline.
Carbon monoxide: a major pollutant in Toronto—93 per cent comes from motor vehicles.
Suspended particulates (particles): from vehicle emissions (38%) and residential heating, such as wood burning. Diesel is a major source of particles.
Combatting smog is even more of a challenge because in certain weather conditions, up to 50 per cent of our smog blows in over the border from the USA. At the same time, pollution from Toronto blows downwind to Quebec and Eastern Canada as well as to parts of the USA.
