News

It is often said that Canada has two seasons: winter and road construction. Depending on where you call home, a noxious third period has since elbowed its way in: smog season.

The thick violet-brown haze that forms a gloomy blanket over parts of Southern Ontario every summer will soon be measured by a new index. The Air Quality Health Index (AQHI), already rolled out in Vancouver and Halifax, will be test-piloted in Toronto for 18 months beginning July 5.

Directly linking air quality to health risks, the AQHI is an intuitive 10-point scale: the higher the AQHI value, the greater the health implications.

The index also provides descriptive health information for the at-risk and general population related to the reading. Torontonians will soon be able to log on to Environment Canada's weather office website, Weatheroffice.gc.ca, where the AQHI readings will be updated hourly, with forecasts issued twice daily.

But for those used to the CN Tower's disappearing act in the summer months, do smog warnings just equal more hot air?

Monica Campbell of Toronto Public Health's environmental protection office believes that the new 10-point scale will trump the current index as it "looks at the combined health effects of multiple key pollutants. It will give people a better tool to understand more accurately what the health risk is so that they can reduce their exposure."

Ironically, in Los Angeles, where smog has become the city mascot, air-quality officials feel that greater awareness doesn't combat bad air - tough regulation does. Tina Cherry of the South Coast Air Quality Management District says they "control emissions from the sources we have authority to regulate, namely industry."

Strict regulations on power plants, refineries, gas stations and even dry cleaners have resulted in L.A.'s smog being cut by 75 per cent since 1985.

Ms. Campbell counters. "Because the air quality is so poor, we really need tools like this [the AQHI] and we really need people to use them." She emphasizes that "the best information to date indicates that 1,700 premature deaths and about 6,000 hospitalizations per year in Toronto could be attributed to air pollution."

Ross McKitrick, an associate professor of economics at the University of Guelph, doesn't buy the body-count approach. "There are so many studies yielding different and often conflicting results, that there's a danger that the index will be based on cherry-picking the coefficients to give the desired effect."

Dr. McKitrick, whose book A Breath of Fresh Air: Market Solutions for Improving Canada's Environment will be published by the Fraser Institute this fall, examines Canadian urban air pollution data back to 1974.

"People don't have easy access to this sort of long-term pollution data, so they hear governments and environmentalists telling them that air pollution is getting worse, and they have no way of knowing that it's not true. If we had the same [air-quality monitoring] system back in 1970, we'd have had smog alerts all year round - today they would seem few and far between by comparison."

Tell that to eight-year veteran bike courier and Toronto Bike Messenger Association board member Joe Landry. "You really notice the difference on heavy smog days," Mr. Landry admits. "It's harder to breathe and you cough a lot more." Mr. Landry cites bad air for the demise of "Biker Bob," a long-time courier who, after a record amount of smog days in 2005, "suffered a heart attack and died on the job."

While Mr. Landry believes that the AQHI project is a step in the right direction, he insists that we need to "improve the quality of the air we breathe, not just the quality of the measuring tools."

Heidi Sopinka, a seasoned world traveller, plans to stay put until the afterlife to neutralize her carbon footprint.

By the numbers

5,800

Estimated premature deaths

related to air pollution in Ontario (2005)

10,060

Projected estimate of premature deaths related to air pollution

in Ontario (2026)

$507-million Ontario health-care costs related to air pollution (2005)

$702-million Projected Ontario health-care costs related to air pollution (2026)

Source: Ontario Medical

Association

hsopinka@globeandmail.com