A ”vile cocktail” of cancer-causing pollutants has been measured in and around some of South Africa’s industrial centres, Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Thursday.
Speaking at the opening of an international conference in Somerset West on weather, climate and air quality, he said the country spent more than R4-billion a year on respiratory health problems linked to foul air.
Air quality was one of the most pressing environmental health challenges facing both the developed and developing world, he told delegates on Thursday at the 14th Session of the Commission for Atmospheric Sciences.
”Unacceptable concentrations of cancer-causing pollutants have been measured in and around our own industrial centres.
”Every winter, our people cough and choke from breathing a vile cocktail of airborne pollution that remains trapped under temperature inversion layers,” he said in his speech, a copy of which was sent to the South African Press Association.
A ministry spokesperson said that Van Schalkwyk was referring primarily to the industrial area of Durban South in KwaZulu-Natal, and the so-called Vaal Triangle industrial region in Gauteng, south of Soweto.
No further information on pollution levels around industrial centres in other parts of the country was immediately available.
In his address, Van Schalkwyk said government had acted to stop air pollution.
”Our new Air Quality Act, passed by Parliament in 2004, provides for the setting of standards both for the quality of air that we breathe, and for what may be released into that air.
”We will also be announcing for public comment, before the end of March, the first set of ambient air quality standards for South Africa and the first ‘controlled emitter’ in terms of our new law,” he said.
The opening of the conference coincides with the first anniversary of the coming into force of the Kyoto Protocol, which is aimed at cutting atmospheric levels of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. – Sapa