Editorial

A philosopher once said we are what we eat and we have spent half a century thinking about the matter, with the prevalence of ubiquitous pesticides helping us to make up our minds.

The next proposition from the philosophical racks must surely be that we breathe what we exhale. Marshalling our multifold ruminations in this case is the fact of mounting vehicular traffic on our roads.

As a corollary one could go into the matter of the kind of traffic it is, considering the continuing profuseness of smoking old relics on our roads, despite lip-saving VRTs and officially declared willingness to enforce the law.

Why have VRTs at all if we do not manually pick off the road, by sight, vehicles that offend every day and in all parts of Malta? The most illogical thing in the world is the imposition of sophisticated VRTs while turning a blind eye on easily distinguishable smoke machines on wheels.

The police could go out tomorrow and get at least 1,000 gravely offending cars, buses and other vehicles off the road by sending them for a road-test immediately and forbidding them circulation unless they do. But does the will exist?

There are times when the best use of statistics is to quote them. There are almost 268,000 vehicles on the road. New licences issued in the third quarter of this year amounted to 3,670.

Comparing last year with the previous one, the total number of newly licensed motor vehicles registered an increase of 264, or 7.8 per cent. Not only are the numbers going up, but so is the growth rate.

Blocked traffic is usual on our roads especially during rush and popular hours. But what are we doing about parking? Unless we provide parking, it will soon be impossible to go anywhere, for fear of losing your parking and not finding parking wherever you want to go.

Without adequate parking we shall kill our capital city, our entertainment, our healthy or cultural activities, our eating outlets. Already, losing your present parking is a prime consideration when you are invited to a gathering of like-thinking human beings. You weigh your pros and cons. And, of course, so-called public transport is not an alternative!

The introduction of unleaded petrol has paid dividends. A report commissioned by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority has found that lead concentration levels in the air have dropped by half in the space of a year. Blata l-Bajda and Fontana were found, on average, however, to exceed the air quality standards recommended by the European Union. Levels in Naxxar and Senglea were also high.

The annual mean lead levels were lowest in Comino, Lija and Ta' Pinu, joined by St Andrew's, Safi and Kirkop. Thank goodness for the EU, whose member countries are required to achieve the air quality standards established by directive 96/62/EC by 2005. The directive aims to assess, maintain and improve ambient air quality in member countries on the basis of established standard methods.

The major sources of atmospheric pollution in urban areas are primarily traffic emissions. The existence of industrial activities may compound the problem.

The reduction of lead concentration in the air to acceptable levels was mainly due to the phasing out of leaded fuel at the beginning of the year, the report said. More needs to be done, but only by grabbing the horns of that bull.