Taiwan's Twist For Cleaner Air

Tao Zhu Yin Yuan

- Erik Paolo Escueta

Air quality is a serious matter. It is, after all, one of the requirements for sustaining life. Numerous health organizations and government environmental protection agencies all over the world are continuously monitoring the air quality index, generating actual data to help identify ways to improve our air quality.

But the reports are alarming. In September 2016, the World Health Organization reported that some three million deaths a year are linked to exposure to outdoor air pollution, with indoor air pollution just as deadly. Furthermore, nearly 90 percent of air pollution-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, with nearly two out of three occurring in WHO’s Southeast Asia and Western Pacific regions.

More recently, the first issue of the State of Global Air 2017 found that the highest combustion sources for air pollutants were concentrated in South and Southeast Asia, China, and Central and Western sub-Saharan Africa. In 2015, China and India together accounted for 52 percent of the 4.2 million total global deaths attributed to air pollutants.