by Vinia M.Datinguinoo

PATCHOT RAMIREZ recalls getting the scar on her left leg when she was eight. She had fallen off a guava tree, one of many in her old neighborhood in Barangay Ugong in Pasig, and she was fortunate enough to end up with just a nasty wound on her leg.

Ramirez is now 55, and the scar is her reminder of the Pasig of old, the one that had abundant trees, clear springs, and wide open spaces. Ramirez says she still remembers how everything then seemed so fresh, with the air smelling of newly cut grass. Now, she says, "all you smell is the smog."

Beginning in the 1960s, the fields in Ramirez's neighborhood began to disappear, as houses and more houses were built. Huge factories soon followed, and the stench that came with the thuds and groans of heavy machinery hard at work began to take over Pasig. Today, Ramirez's former playground is one of the most polluted cities in Metro Manila, which is perhaps why children in Ramirez's neighborhood seem to be perpetually nursing a cold.

Various studies have shown that the levels of pollutants present in Metro Manila's air are now anywhere from three to five times more than the acceptable levels. That only means the risks of residents in the country's capital falling ill from pollution have increased, with the young and the elderly most in danger.

As it is, pediatricians are already reporting that babies as young as two months are suffering from asthma, and suspect the city's progressively dirty air as among the main culprits for the trend. They also point out that air pollution inhibits the mental development of children, gives rise to a host of respiratory ailments, and has become a major cause of premature death. In addition, daily exposure to high concentrations of respirable pollutants increases people's chances of developing lung cancer by up to 15 percent.

One lawmaker has even been prompted to say that Metro Manila's 12 million people may well be in a gas chamber, where they are slowly being choked to death.

That may be an exaggeration. But then, the city's air is truly toxic, being a lethal mix composed of the following: fumes from 3.2 million vehicles, many of which are stuck for long hours in heavy traffic; emissions from factories (70 percent of the country's industrial firms are found in Metro Manila's 636 square kilometers, and many of them don't have pollution-control mechanisms); and fumes from garbage being burnt in the open air.

The situation is so serious that health officials are scrambling to help their colleagues in the environment department in literally clearing the air in the metropolis. And just to make sure policy makers would be able to come up with the right laws and implementation rules to accomplish that, the Department of Health (DOH) is spearheading an ambitious project whose major component aims to find out just which illnesses can be traced to exactly what pollutants.

For all the studies that have been churned out by various agencies and institutions here and abroad about the health hazards posed by air pollution, it seems that Philippine officials—including those from the DOH—still need to make sure which pollutants are wreaking the most havoc on the health of Metro Manilans.

Dr. Cristina Galang of the DOH's environmental health division says there is no doubt that air pollution causes higher incidences of respiratory illnesses. "But," she says in the next breath, "our studies are limited."

Sometimes, they don't get off the ground at all. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), for instance, has been trying for years to establish baseline data of where the pollutants are and what their levels are - and has so far failed miserably. It set up 10 manual samplers and two automatic samplers in key points in the metropolis. Owing to poor maintenance, all of these have been limited to monitoring only total suspended particulates (TSP, or to put it more simply, dust), but not other pollutants.

The DENR is among the six government departments, six sub-offices, local governments, and a host of private sector groups that are involved in the new project, which is being funded largely by a $300-million loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). With money from the project, the DENR now hopes to buy new equipment to be able to keep track of other pollutants.

PERHAPS THE pollution problem would be solved faster if the government kept track as well of how the Clean Air Act is being implemented. When it was passed in 1999, the Act had been hailed as breakthrough legislation that would finally tackle the country's worsening air pollution. The law did result in the phasing out of leaded gasoline, which is now no longer being sold. But other components of the Clean Air Act have yet to be set in motion.

Among these is a systematic motor vehicle inspection system that should have been set up by now by the transportation department. The Land Transportation Office should also not be allowing the registration of smoke-belching vehicles anymore.

The Pollution Adjudication Board, meanwhile, has yet to step up efforts to lessen air pollution from stationary sources such as manufacturers. And the energy department does not seem to be making moves at all to explore alternative fuels as stipulated in the act.

Many more components of the act remain stalled because no funds have been set aside to get them going. The line agencies supposed to implement them apparently had been expected to use their regular budgets to do so, but there is simply nothing to spare for such additional tasks.

"We always need to look at this issue at the macro level," says Environmental Management Bureau assistant director Fernardino Concepcion. "For example, the DENR should have been given P300 million for the initial implementation of the Clean Air Act, but up to now, there has been nothing."

For some reason, the ADB loan could not be used for that purpose. But of course anything involving governments, money, and giant projects is as tangled as Metro Manila traffic on Midnight Madness Fridays, and rethinking what to do with money marked for something else can just complicate matters. In any case, health officials and those from other agencies insist they need the ADB money to conduct studies that can only help Metro Manilans in the future. Galang, for instance, says that for nine months beginning this May, the DOH will monitor ambient air and get data from hospitals regarding consultations for specific illnesses. "We hope," Galang says, "to be able to make certain predictions from such data."