A few years ago, I stumbled across a wonderful bit of satire in Mexico's leading English language daily, The News. Under the column heading of "The Irreverent Gringo", the author hilariously explained how Mexico City's air was a gold mine of raw materials and resources, just waiting to be processed; the high concentrations of lead could be harvested for use in glass factories; fecal matter, commonly found floating in the air, would be perfect for high-grade fertilizers. Concerns about the ozone layer? Heck, Mexico City's air had tons of ozone; we just needed to bottle it up and fire it back into the stratosphere. This called for a celebration, or at least a few tequilas raised to the new-found fortune.
Continuing in this tone, it was equally humourous to see the Mexican federal government trying to take credit this September for low pollution readings which resulted from the strong winds and rains from Hurricane Gerty. The President of the National Ecological Institute, Sergio Reyes Lujan, came under heavy criticism when he implied that federal emission control efforts and other anti-pollution programs has led to the recent drop (in August and September) in air particle readings. Reyes further stated that long-term studies had proven that both lead and sulphur counts were significantly lower for more than a year now, but that the level of other contaminants, such as ozone, had shown very little change.
Just when the laugh-track appeared to end, the Metropolitan Commission for the Prevention and Control of Contamination in the Valley of Mexico (CMPCAVM) released its findings in early October, concluding that less than 2% of all suspended particle matter in Mexico City's air was caused by industry, and more than 43% was caused by ground erosion. These reports quickly caused outrage and incredulity. Greenpeace representatives immediately countered with World Bank and World Health Organization analysis which showed that Mexico City's TSP (total suspended particles) index commonly exceeded the U.S. average by six times. Greenpeace leaders also stressed that this new report by the city's pollution- control agency hides the seriousness of the particle-matter problem in Mexico City, where more than 6,000 people may die each year because of exposure to particles in the air. Greenpeace's argument was supported by a recent report prepared by the Federal Attorney General's Office for the Protection of the Environment (Profepa), in which Profepa found that 90% of industries operating in the Mexico City valley were emitting particles into the air...and of the more than 7,000 businesses inspected by Profepa in the first half of 1993, more than 6,000 displayed irregularities in their production processes.
All these items point to the fact that industrial and combustion sources must be responsible for more TSP pollution than what local commissions and reports have been acknowledging. Greenpeace has demanded that the government begin broadcasting weekly detailed reports about air quality and the levels of suspended particle matter.
All of these recent developments would normally make one laugh at their ludicrous nature; if, that is, one wasn't working in what the World Health Organization called the "dirtiest air of any major metropolitan area in the world"; and if this air didn't cause coughing, lung and throat irritation, burning eyes, and a myriad of other ailments-and if winter wasn't approaching, when cold air inversions tend to hold Mexico City's air masses in place for days.
- Andreas Seppelt, Latin American Correspondant
