Hong Kong New Air Quality Index Shows Very High Health Risk

December 31, 2013 Leave a comment

Hong Kong New Air Quality Index Shows Very High Health Risk

A new Hong Kong air quality index introduced yesterday as part of the city’s efforts to combat pollution registered “very high” a day after the guage reached its highest level.A roadside monitoring station in Causeway Bay ranked the health risk from pollution 8 on a scale of 1 to 10 at 8 a.m., according to the Air Quality Health Index. The citywide risk for the afternoon showed health risks to be “moderate to very high,” according to the index. From 4 p.m. yesterday to 1 a.m. today, the level was 10 to 10+, or “serious.”

The new index reflects efforts by the city to address pollution that has gotten worse since 2007, the result of factory production in China’s Pearl River Delta region as well as pollutants from tens of thousands of vehicles running diesel engines. Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has made cleaning up the city’s skies a priority.

Readings on the new index are calculated based on health risks from inhaling concentrations of ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. The government this year pledged HK$12 billion ($1.5 billion) in subsidies to replace old diesel vehicles and limit their life-span to battle smog.

Cities across China are frequently hit with bouts of smog that impact health and economic activity.

Shanghai airports were forced to delay or cancel hundreds of flights earlier this month after the city’s pollution index was more than 23 times levels recommended by the World Health Organization. The air quality index in Shanghai was 159 as of 8 a.m. today, signaling “moderate pollution,” third worst in a six-tier system, according to the website of the city’s environmental monitoring center.

The level of particles that are smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter was 140.2 micrograms per cubic meter. Those pollutants are more hazardous than other particulate matter, according to the WHO.

Yesterday, Shanghai issued a “heavy pollution” alert, recommending that the young and old to stay indoors.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Gregory Turk in Shanghai at gturk2@bloomberg.net; Benjamin Haas in Hong Kong at bhaas7@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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