NOW that it’s the Clean Air month of November, it is timely and about time to measure up the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’s (DENR) air-pollution measures after 17 years of the Clean Air Act—enacted into law on June 23, 1999.
Measure or sure miss? Although there are many provisions in the law that remain unimplemented, over 95 percent of the DENR’s air-pollution measures have focused solely on the annual acquisition of hundreds of millions of pesos worth of ambient air-monitoring stations.
Unlike measuring pollution directly at source from motor vehicle exhaust pipes and factory smokestacks, measuring pollution in the air needs sophisticated technologies for two reasons, otherwise we are sure to miss what must be measured. One reason is that, unlike many inland continental countries, which have more stagnant air, an archipelagic Philippines experiences regular sea breeze that affects air-pollution concentrations.
In a study done by Emman Anglo, PhD, about a decade ago when he was still with Ateneo University, he noted that air turbulence could radically alter and dilute ambient air measurements. We can, thus, say this could understate ambient air pollution. Nonetheless, this can be neutralized, if we can do real-time and log in regular patterns and averages. Otherwise, we will miss to measure air pollution for sure.
A second factor is the importance of state-of-the-art technologies. In one clean-air forum about two years ago, it was admitted that most of the air-monitoring stations acquired by the DENR’s Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) have high standard deviation errors of 25 percent, compared to more advanced technologies with 2.5 percent errors. The high 25- percent chance of error all the more makes these equipment surely miss their target of measuring accurately.
Favored supplier gets the “bite”? Raising these issues against the DENR for some time now are the Coalition of Clean Air Advocates of the Philippines (CCAAP), led by its Chairman Atty. Leo Olarte, MD, its president Herminio Verano Jr.; activist priest Fr. Roberto Reyes; and Airboard Partner Manny Galvez, who submitted to Environment Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez on September 9 an assessment of these stations.
It revealed that the same favored supplier, Electro-Byte, who apparently gets the entire “bite” of procurement budgets, has been supplying the same obsolete imported equipment, allegedly phased out already abroad.
Galvez said these Continuous Ambient Air Monitoring System (CAMS) stations are a misnomer, as they cannot measure “continuous” real time. Electrobyte’s CAMS called Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS) only make manual readings at far intervals, with their data allegedly manipulated and computed to acceptable averages. Worse, many of them are not working, he said.
Not contented, E-Byte bites more? In 2003 the first CAMS, about 10 units worth $10 million funded on loan by the Asian Development Bank were procured by DENR-EMB, all of which have not worked.
Unfazed by the dismal experience, EMB ordered in 2006 four more DOAS from Electrobyte, all allegedly failing to deliver consistent and reliable data. By 2010, four more DOAS were procured; and by 2011, PM10 and PM2.5 analyzers, also from Electrobyte, were bought.
In 2013 10 more DOAS were procured, whereby Electrobyte received full payment prior to installation. On the same year, five more DOAS audit equipment were procured to certify that all past DOAS work. Again in 2013 17 more DOAS or CAMS were purchased for EMB-NCR, but only 14 were finally turned over.
“EMB-NCR inspected the 14 stations and discovered they were not calibrated, could not produce reliable data nor can they do real time. Being obsolete, they were non-US Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] PM2.5 analyzers,” Galvez said, claiming the findings were shelved by EMB officials. Not contented, again in 2013, Electrobyte supplied 10 more units for installation in other regions, which did not report any data nor were their locations known publicly.
ln 2014 a mercury analyzer was procured, but has been lying idle. In 2015 seven more DOAS (CAMS) were again purchased, and Electrobyte allegedly got fully paid prior to installation, despite poor performance, contrary to rules allowing 30 to 60 days tests before acceptance and full payments are made.
In 2015 EMB tried to bid out 37 more DOAS (worth P370 million), while for 2016, it has programmed to procure more analyzers for particulate matter (PM), mercury and black carbon, all totaling P314 million.
All’s not lost, but solution neither found. Galvez said “there is partly good news as we did ‘damage control at our cost’ just to prove the government can do things right. We converted EMB-NCR’s 14 stations into functional units, by installing real-time loggers, but reading at real-time only solves half the problem, at least for NCR’s stations.”
Unfortunately, they still cannot monitor accurately. They need to be calibrated, rehabilitated and upgraded, but EMB has allegedly refused to subject them to scrutiny, for whatever reason, he added. The bigger problem is reading actual pollution levels. It is probably for this reason reports of pollution that is reported daily on TV are positively either “Good” or “Fair”.
This is a total contrast to the findings of the 2015 Manila Aerosol Characterization Experiment (MACE) study conducted by RESCueAIR, the organization of local scientists and researchers, led by Dr. Mylene Cayetano from University of the Philippines and Dr. Edgar Vallar from La Salle, who all unfairly forked out their own personal money, to fund a team and equipment from the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) of Leipzig, Germany. One micron “black carbon” taken from Katipunan and Taft Avenue were as much as twice to 4X the levels in Leipzig.
Government sincerity, now put to the test. Government is now put to the test as the feisty Environment Secretary Lopez, who was determined to go headstrong against big mining firms for destructive overmining, is now under watch on whether she will soften this time to an issue, closer to home, involving her top subordinates.
It may be recalled only last month that Undersecretary Leo Jasareno, who headed the DENR’s mining audit team, was sacked by Malacañang, but Lopez declared she wants him back.
With factories moving to the regions and the increasing volume of vehicles and traffic, vehicles as a percentage of total air pollution in Metro Manila has increased from 70 percent two decades back to 88 percent and finally to 92 percent as of 2015. It’s high time government must have solid programs to reduce emissions at source, and not focus solely on measuring pollution in the air. I hope they imbibe my mission, which is “Emission Impossible.”
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com