Anil Bhattarai
JAN 25 –
Ride a bike if you are a man enough, ride a bicycle if you are a human enough!! — Kathmandu Bicycle City 2020.
Air pollution is a major killer in Kathmandu. Even if most of us know this, we need to keep repeating this because there is no other way to shake the complacency of many who know but don’t act. But there are many who don’t know the truth and they need to be informed. Because most of this is the direct result of lack of good public transportation, lack of a good network of bicycle paths and excessive promotion of private forms of motorised mobility, the health problems arising out of the appalling air pollution cannot be addressed without fundamentally shaking up the transportation system itself. This transformation can come only with very strong and organised citizen’s initiatives that espouse the value of liveability of a place. In that respect, the initiatives of young people organised around Kathmandu Bicycle City 2020 need big public support.
There has been an alarming increase in heart diseases and heart-related deaths among the young and old in Kathmandu. On Dec. 16, 2009, in the report on the untimely death of anthropologist Saubhagya Shah, Nagariknews referred to Bir Hospital’s heart specialist Dr. Prakash Raj Regmi as saying that there has been an alarming rise of heart problems among young people in Kathmandu during the last some years. The death of Nepal’s noted TV anchor Indra Lohani on Jan. 16, 2009 had sparked panic among Kathmandu’s young ones and had shaken their complacency. In January 2010, Nepal Weekly magazine ran a cover story on the rising heart-related deaths and illnesses in Kathmandu — both among the youth and old. The sale of pharmaceuticals, expansion of heart specialty clinics and hospital records all attest to the fact that there has been an unmistakable spike in the incidence of heart problems in Kathmandu.
A few years ago, Clean Energy Nepal (CEN) and Environment and Public Health Organisation (ENPHO) analysed the multi-year data from Kathmandu’s three major hospitals: Teaching, Bir and Patan. Between 1992 and 2002, the air pollution level measured in terms of the concentration of air particles of various sizes increased 10 times on Kathmandu’s major thoroughfares. This is the direct result of vehicle exhaust. We can imagine how the situation has become by now. The CEN and ENPHO analysis shows that between 1995 and 2000, the number of patients admitted to Patan Hospital has doubled. Expectedly, there has been a very significant increase in the proportion of heart patients in the total patient loads of the hospitals during the same period.
This is consistent with many other researches from other parts of the world. In an analysis of six cities in the U.S. in the early part of the last decade, people who lived in polluted cities died earlier than their counterparts in less polluted cities. Another study examining 250 metropolitan areas from around the world consistently showed that there was a direct correlation between pollution and the number of heart attacks. Salt Lake City in the U.S. provided a dramatic example of the linkage between heart problems and pollution. When a steel mill in the vicinity of the city was closed for several months, there was a 4-6 percent reduction in overall mortality, most of that from heart problems. When the mill resumed operation, the mortality level went back up to the previous level.
Among all this, a 2005 study carried out by researchers from New York University, Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the University of Michigan produced perhaps the strongest ever connections between pollution levels and heart problems. This research divided 28 mice into two groups: one group fed on normal diet and the other on high-fat diet. Over six months, half in each of the two groups breathed filtered clean air while the other half breathed polluted air within the limit set by the Environment Protection Agency where the air pollution was equal to that in New York City. The results were dramatic. The level of plaque, cholesterol and inflammation of the heart vessels was significantly higher among mice that breathed polluted air as compared to those who breathed clean filtered air. Those who were fed a high-fat diet that breathed polluted air had an even more dramatic level of heart problems than those who were fed a normal diet and who breathed filtered air.
Kathmandu’s air is far more polluted than that of New York City. And there are many other things at play in Kathmandu. The sense of insecurity among most in the city is perhaps the highest at present. Most youth lack optimism regarding future life prospects. Food habits have changed dramatically with an increasing level of alcohol consumption, smoking, processed foods and high-fat meat-based diets. The long line of young people in front of Kentucky Fried Chicken is the most symbolic of this trend. Motorised mobility and declining open public spaces have dramatically reduced available public spaces for physical exercise. All these factors are surely adding to the situation already made worse by the abysmal level of air quality. It is clear that we cannot provide good health to the population when much of the organisation of that society is bad. In other words, a healthy Kathmandu cannot be imagined without addressing the issue of building a largely non-polluting transportation system in the valley.
Fortunately, in terms of its geographical size, Kathmandu is perfectly placed to address this problem in some innovative ways. At the centre of the solution has to be promotion of bicycles and walking to be backed up with a public transportation system to be set up by imposing very high taxes on privatised modes of transportation. I am not sure how well this proposal will go down with Kathmandu’s middle and upper classes who have invested themselves with polluting privatised forms of mobility. If we promote this, we might be spearheading the creation of perhaps the most liveable city in South Asia. Kathmandu does not have to be this ugly, this polluted and this unhealthy. It is not by chance that all this has happened.
As the group Kathmandu Cycle City 2020 says on their web log, besides promotion of mobility for the majority, bicycles can address many other things simultaneously. It can address health problems both by reducing air pollution and by promoting physical exercise. It can address the problem of global warming by reducing the consumption of fossil fuels that need to be transported across the mountain ranges. It can address independence by reducing the dependence on fossil fuels as well as motor vehicles that come from outside. Bike paths can also be great public spaces for Kathmandu’s children who are deprived of public spaces both in school and in their residential neighbourhood. But accepting bicycles as an important means of mobility requires a good public policy that gives priority to both liveability and mobility of a large section of Kathmandu’s population. In other words, there is no short cut to good health of Kathmandu’s population other than creating a good and liveable city.