Editorial

Air is a basic need for life to thrive but, if polluted, it becomes a health hazard.

Air pollutants can also be the result of anthropogenic activity. The principal sources are power generation, industry and transport, particularly in urban areas. The EU Air Quality Directive, adopted on May 21, 2008, addresses the issue and aims to define and establish objectives for ambient air quality designed to prevent or reduce harmful effects on human health and the environment as a whole.

One of the EU’s environment action programmes establishes the need to cut pollution to levels that minimise harmful effect on human health, paying particular attention to improve the monitoring and assessment of air quality, including the deposition of pollutants and to provide information to the public. One of the pollutants addressed by the EU directive is particulate matter, the terminology used to define PM10, the fine dust fraction (having a diameter of 10 micrometer or less) which is not visible to the naked eye, is airborne for long periods of time and can also travel kilometres. This dust fraction is significant to human health because the particles are not filtered by the respiratory system. If they are very fine, the smallest fractions PM2.5, can also end up in the blood stream.

The Malta Environment and Planning Authority is the competent authority responsible for the monitoring of air pollution and for coordinating policy measures. To facilitate compliance with the air quality acquis, in 2006 Mepa, with financial assistance from the European Union, acquired an additional two monitoring stations and staff was trained in the use of this equipment. One cannot say there was no substantial improvement but the situation is far from satisfactory and still worrying.

The black dust problem persists, now for more than a decade and, indeed, far too long for comfort. The recent discovery of a carpet of black dust in a valley near Fgura fuelled the debate, even if it has now been established it was grit blasting material dumped there by the shipyards in the 1970s and 1980s.

Bottom line is the black dust is still causing inconvenience, financial burden and possible health hazards. Its negative impacts are mostly felt in the harbour and inner harbour regions, namely Cottonera, Marsa, Fgura and surrounding urban areas, especially when northerly winds blow. This, however, does not exclude other areas beyond.

An official statement that the black dust problem is dead and buried, if anything, only served to throw more coal into the fire, even if it was later specified that the statement referred to a particular point in time by when Mepa had not received any new reports of such black dust. It was announced soon afterwards that a motion to set up a parliamentary committee to discuss the source of the back dust was presented in Parliament. How this committee will function has yet to be seen. It may decide to turn to Mepa or argue that the best scientific way to find out the origin of the black dust and what impact it is having on human health and the environment is to entrust it to an independent scientific body. The second option would perhaps be the best in the circumstances. But, whatever the way forward, it is imperative there are concrete conclusions in the shortest time possible followed by fast remedial action, whatever that entails.

Public health cannot wait.