Benzene mountain?

A recent survey reported in The Times showed that air quality and specifically fumes from cars and trucks were number one in people's lists of concerns about the environment. This report implied surprise that Malta's mountain at Maghtab was not the number one worry.

However, a follow-up report by Natalino Fenech, based on findings dating back to 2000 and 2001, showed that the people are right to be so concerned, and to give air quality such priority. The wind, contrary to local popular belief, does almost nothing to clean our dirty air and we have higher levels of air pollution in our country areas than do urban areas of Sweden!

In fact, all the wind does in Malta is to spread all the pollution around so practically nowhere is safe and even our countryside is dirtier than urban areas of Europe.

We live in this benzene mountain, not usually visible like Maghtab but we can smell it certainly. In some closed congested streets you can even see it, such as in Rue D'Argens, Gzira, but on most of our popular promenades from Sliema to Bugibba the smell of car pollution is everywhere.

Why does all this matter so much? It is not harmless smoke, that's why. Benzene is a known cancer causing agent, causing, according to the published report, "bone marrow damage, leukaemia and lymphomas in humans".

Perhaps even more surprising to the general public are the very high levels of benzene in our indoor places of entertainment, mainly frequented by the young and healthy, of course. And while most parents of older children I know are worried about the sex and drugs scene at Paceville, it appears that the smoking scene means that their kids are simply inhaling (even if they are not smokers themselves) massive doses of cancer causing fumes.

The smoking issue in Malta is really beyond a joke. Whereas in Europe consumption is dropping, in Malta, especially among the young, smoking is so hip you practically cannot discuss it.

We are without a doubt a nation of fundamentalists, in the sense that we refuse, if we want to believe in something, to open our eyes and see sense. The same blind faith we apply to religion and politics is applied to anything we want to do.

In Malta smoke free entertainment places are unheard of. Indeed the opposite is true. Again, according to The Times report, in a typical bar surveyed, the benzene levels were as high as those found in the Santa Venera tunnel no less!

Now how many of us would choose to spend an evening chatting and flirting in the Sta Venera tunnel? That is how most young people are spending their evenings out though.

So whether you are outdoors or indoors in Malta you are risking high doses of exposure to well known cancer causing agents. It is a very sobering thought, not least because all of us know of at least a few people who have recently died, or become very sick in the prime of their lives.

People who were the picture of health. People who did not smoke but had the symptoms of lung cancer. Just too many young people leaving us unnecessarily young and we should stop and think about this when we look at the faces of our little five to 15-year-olds going off to school...

Maghtab is going to be closed next year. Thanks to EU directives and thanks to all the hard preparatory work of Francis Zammit Dimech and his team. Now the much harder implementation is in the hands of a brand new ministry and minister.

Improved air quality, indoors and outdoors, must be made an achievable target by this new administration. One important step has already been taken in that we are buying cleaner petrol.

But those dirty cars, trucks and buses must be stopped. It is way too late for comfy ad campaigns, or the assumption that the VRT test would eliminate the problem.

It clearly has not. Have an ad campaign, sure, but this time give the public a number to phone when they see a truck or a similar vehicle spewing black smoke into our air and let us just report the number plate.

Let us clear the air of this benzene mountain we all live in, north and south, rich and less so, blue or red, young and old.

Now we know how bad it is we have no reason not to act and to act decisively. If it is too late for us let it be safer for our kids, at least...