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The quality of Johannesburg’s air came under the microscope this week, after the city of gold erupted in pockets of 24-carat stench.

The City of Johannesburg’s Air Quality Management Unit initially reassured her nose-pinching residents that the sulphuric odour was no cause for alarm, or necessarily detrimental to health and safety.

But, according to an article in Africa News, environmental experts say that we should be taking the repercussions of air pollution much more seriously.

EWN reported that denizens of the industrial metropolis sniffed out what appeared to be a “sulphur cloud” last week; the acrid atmosphere was subsequently said to have likely wafted over from a power plant or an industrial site in Mpumalanga.

Speaking on behalf of Environment and Infrastructure Services, MMC Michael Sun reassured people that the situation would be monitored on an ongoing basis, stipulating that:

“The smell was widespread across the city, which thankfully excludes the possibility of a localised source in Johannesburg. I urge residents not to panic. The City is potentially dealing with a cross-boundary pollution source.”

But more recently, some environmental experts and medical practitioners have intimated that this explanation is a touch laissez-faire.

Raeesa Moolla, a professor of Meteorology, Air Quality, [and] Environmental Health Risk at Wits, is quoted as saying that the eggy, rotten stench that people have been noticing “is indicative of… pollution being quite high in the area”:

“Even if they’re saying that it’s not dangerous, it’s not toxic, the chemicals generally in air pollution, most of the pollutants, will cause some sort of health effects.”

GP Dafni Zisis appears to concur:

[Pollution] “irritates your inflammatory response… It contributes to a lot of disease, cardiopulmonary disease, ischemic heart disease and strokes, for example, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, lower respiratory tract infection and lung cancer.”

Zisis further says that there has been a steady rise in the rates of childhood asthma, which is deeply troubling since South Africa currently has the fifth-highest asthma mortality rate in the world.

Our ongoing reliance on dirty modes of transportation – specifically motor vehicles – is reportedly to blame for Jo’burg’s high levels of air pollution, which recent studies portend will shorten the average lifespan of city-dwellers by 3,2 years.

At the moment, South Africa as a whole is significantly over the level of PM (particle matter) considered safe by the World Health Organisation, which Africa News links to a disturbing global trend.

That is, while so-called ‘developed’ nations have peaked and are levelling out their pollution, that of their ‘developing’ counterparts is still very much on the rise.

[source:africanews]