From Dr G. Debono

One can only heartily agree (pun not intended) with Dr Bezzina (“Who’s burning our lungs?” TMIS, 30 October) when he advocates a change from personal road transport to the alternatives of walking, cycling or using public transport, and when he deplores the reduction in physical activity and increase in obesity we are now witnessing.

He is also right to draw attention to the woeful inadequacy of our public transport, the importation of second-hand cars, the aging fleet of privately owned vehicles, and so on. Dr Bezzina also rightfully draws attention to the polluted air along major arterial roads in rush hours; in fact it is far worse than this – the pollution exists round the clock and is present over most, if not all, of Malta and Gozo.

Apart from the complacency of our government over the serious pollution generated by our rotten old buses and commercial vehicles, the plain fact is that there are simply too many cars on the island and that they are used far too much. No matter how sophisticated and environmentally-friendly newly introduced vehicles might be, or how stringent the EU emission rules are in regulating new car design, the simple fact remains that the internal combustion engine will always be a polluting machine.

As long as there are too many people driving too many cars for too many trivial reasons, the pollution problem is here to stay. Furthermore, though diesel engines produce less carbon dioxide, it is wrong to regard them as benign because, no matter how small the quantities of particulate matter (PM) emitted by diesel engines, these particulates still have a negative health impact since there is no threshold effect of particulates or other car pollutants where health effects become negligible or absent.

In any event, improvements in the environmental acceptability of (EU V-compliant) engines in newly manufactured cars tend to be cancelled out by increases in car ownership, longer travelling distances and the increasing use of larger size cars so that the positive impact of regulation can be lost. In Malta this is compounded by the insistence of our government on favouring the exclusive use of private cars for transport by building yet more petrol stations and urban car parks, which encourage yet more private car use, while omitting pavements or cycle paths on new or resurfaced major roads.

As to Dr Bezzina’s comments about the article (ADT silent while our lungs burn) as published by Flimkien ghal-Ambjent Ahjar (FAA), FAA warmly welcomes his comments as the aim of such press releases is to create an awareness and discussion of such problems. In fact his revelation that light heating oil is being mixed with diesel to power many of Malta’s belching heavy-duty engines is a very alarming eye-opener which should be immediately investigated and stamped out by the authorities.

In any event, the thrust of the FAA article was about enforcement against the serious environmental problem of vehicle polluters, which happen to be mostly diesel-driven. FAA repeats that it wants to draw attention to government apathy in the face of the uncontrolled emissions of pestilential toxic black smoke from badly maintained or old diesel-driven buses and vehicles – and vehicles that pollute because of mass abuse of dirty fuels on our roads as implied by Dr Bezzina. This huge threat to our health has been with us for decades and repeated administrations have ignored it.

It was nice to see that Dr Bezzina is in favour of increased use of bicycles but his prediction that “we are going to see many dead and injured cyclists” is not exactly encouraging. In fact the average Maltese motorist is very indulgent toward cyclists. It is the buses that are very, very nasty. As long as bus routes are avoided (sadly, the only available refuge on bus routes is the pavement in the absence of cycle paths), cycling in Malta is not one little bit as daunting as Dr Bezzina implies.

George Debono