Tsunamis that originate in the deep ocean initially have a very small wave height that is barely detectable but the waves move very fast — at up to 500 to 1,000 kilometres per hour.

As the waves reach shallower water around coastlines, friction causes them to slow down and this makes them rise in height.

In some cases, the arrival of a tsunami on a shore will be preceded by a sudden retreat of the sea, which can serve as a warning to anyone nearby to evacuate the area.

By the time the waves reach land, they can be as much as ten metres higher than the normal sea level and so can devastate coastal regions, knocking over trees and buildings and carrying debris far inland.

This video footage of the tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 shows the immense power that these waves have.

PROTECTION AGAINST TSUNAMIS
Three things are critical to protect vulnerable coastlines and the people and infrastructure there from tsunamis.

First: a way of detecting tsunamis as soon as they form. Second: a way of alerting people to the danger. And third: coastal defences, evacuation plans and other steps to minimise the impact of any tsunami that does strike.

The earthquakes that cause most tsunamis are hard to predict but when an earthquake happens, it will be noted immediately by seismologists around the world who can issue warning alerts.

Shoreline tide gauges or floating buoys in the deep ocean can measure any change in sea level to confirm whether a quake has triggered a tsunami. The buoys can relay this information via satellite to land-based centres where staff can issue a full tsunami alert, often with predictions of wave heights, speed and direction of travel.

The information can be used to warn people to take action to protect themselves — such as by moving quickly to high ground. In some countries warning centres send text messages to millions of mobile phones soon after getting the alert themselves.

People can also join free international warning systems – such as CWarn – to receive text messages if a tsunami threatens their location. Radio, television and loud-speakers or sirens are also important ways to warn people.

Coastal defences such as sea walls and mangrove forests can help to protect people, but recent research — and the Japanese tsunami of 2011 — suggest that in a very powerful tsunami even these defences can be inadequate. And if an earthquake occurs very close to a coastline, there may simply not be enough time to get a warning to people who live nearby.

REPORTING TIPS
Not every tsunami is big enough to threaten people’s lives. Nor do all oceanic earthquakes cause tsunamis. So when an earthquake strikes, it is important for journalists to assess the risk so they can report responsibly (see also Communicating Risk).

Reliable sources of information include the International Tsunami Information Centre, Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and C-Warn.org, which all monitor and raise alerts about tsunamis.

As with other kinds of natural disasters, citizens are increasingly important to journalists as sources of instant, on-the-ground information that they can share via mobile phones and the internet.

For a discussion of how this kind ‘citizen journalism’ played a role in media coverage of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, see this Poynter article “Taking Tsunami Coverage into Their Own Hands.”

Although the immediate impact of a tsunami is the most devastating, there are many ongoing stories to report in its aftermath — in particular the fate of survivors — who may be injured, homeless, missing or at risk from water-borne diseases.

This kind of natural disaster raises many ethical challenges which are explored in this article in the Pacific Journalism Review [PDF], about the experiences of journalists from New Zealand who reported on the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.

Other lasting effects include the social and economic impacts of damage to infrastructure, such as the damage that salty sea water can do to agricultural land or supplies of drinking water, and damage to roads, schools, hospitals and power supplies.

A big part of the story of a tsunami will be about how well prepared countries and communities were (and this is also an angle that journalists can use to report on tsunamis before they happen) and whether any human factors contributed to people’s vulnerability.

For example, some scientists and environmentalists — see Mangroves: Nature’s defence against Tsunamis [PDF] — say dense coastal mangrove forests can reduce the impact of tsunamis by absorbing some of their energy. They warn that excessive deforestation and coastal development could lead to greater damage and more deaths if a tsunami strikes.

But, as reported here by SciDev.Net, other research concludes that mangroves can offer little protection against a powerful tsunami. The reality will vary from place to place and will depend of course on the size and strength of the tsunami waves.

The Earth Journalism Toolkit page on Reporting on Disasters has more advice that will be relevant to journalists who report on tsunamis. For story ideas and to keep track of news and views about tsunamis in developing nations, see SciDev.Net’s tsunami collection.

CASE STUDY: Indian Ocean tsunami
On 26 December 2004 a large (magnitude 9.0) earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia and it triggered the most devastating tsunami in recorded history — killing an estimated 230,000 and destroying entire towns.

When the earthquake struck, the seabed directly above it rose by several metres and this forced a massive volume of water upwards. The waves were up to 30 metres high and in some places they travelled two kilometres inland.

Indonesia bore the worst of the effects and had the greatest number of casualties but there was also considerable damage in Sri Lanka, Thailand and India. The tsunami also hit Bangladesh, Somalia, South Africa, Myanmar and other countries. For a full list and the number of victims in each country see this table of data on Wikipedia.

The tsunami created a widespread humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people left without shelter, food and water supplies. Many people are still trying to rebuild their lives years later.

At the time, there was no tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean – unlike in the Pacific where earthquakes and tsunamis are much more frequent. Since then, a system has been set up.

LINKS TO OTHER TOOLKIT PAGES
Communicating Risk
Reporting on Disasters

FURTHER READING
International Tsunami Information Centre
Pacific Tsunami Warning Center
C-Warn.org
Tsunami Society International
NOAA tsunami pages

INTRODUCTION
Genetically modified (GM) crops are varieties that scientists have developed by altering the structure of their genetic material (DNA) to make them exhibit specific new traits.

They were first grown commercially in 1996 and since then their use has grown almost 100-fold. By 2010, they were being grown on nearly 150 million hectares of land in 29 countries.

GM crops include both food and non-food crops (such as cotton). They have proven controversial for a number of reasons, and both public debate and media coverage about them has tended to be highly polarised.

The advantage of genetic modification is that new traits can be introduced into crops far faster and with more precision than by traditional plant breeding techniques.

To achieve this, scientists either remove or deactivate genes from a crop’s existing DNA, or insert new genes into the DNA.

The new genes can come from plants that could normally breed with the modified crop or from a very different species (which can be another plant, a bacterium or even an animal). In this case the GM crop can also be called a ‘transgenic’ crop.

Critics raise concerns about the safety of GM foods, risks to the environment and the fact that GM crops tend to be patented varieties controlled by large multinational corporations (see below).

While some countries have embraced GM crops, most have either rejected GM them outright, imposed a temporary ban, or are waiting to conduct research and develop relevant laws before allowing them.

Scientists are trying to develop GM crops for a number of reasons: to improve crop yields, to boost the nutritional quality of foods, to make crops tolerate drought, among others.

Most GM crops that have been commercialised, however, are of just three species (maize, cotton and soybean) and most exhibit one of two main traits.

Some – such as maize — have been modified to tolerate exposure to herbicides, which means that farmers can spray their fields to kill weeds without harming their crops. Others – such as cotton — have been modified with a bacterial gene that creates a toxin that harms insect pests.

CRITICISMS OF GM CROPS
GM crops have been heavily criticised, especially by nongovernmental organisations, but also by scientists and farmers.

The strongest arguments against GM crops are that they do not boost yields or improve farmers’ incomes to the extent that their proponents claim. Indeed, some GM crops have lower yields than their conventional counterparts.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development – a two year effort by hundreds of scientists — concluded that GM food was not a solution to world hunger and that small-scale approaches such as conservation agriculture were the way forward.

The UK government, along with 57 others, approved that report in 2008, but three years later a new study that it commissioned – the Foresight study on Global Food and Farming Futures – stated that GM crops should not be excluded on ethical or moral grounds.

Another major criticism is the introduction of GM crops can make farmers dependent on expensive seeds and other farm inputs made by powerful multinational companies.

When these companies patent the new seeds they develop, they are trying to protect the investments they have made in agricultural research, but many people oppose any form of patenting of life forms.

Patenting also tends to concentrate the ownership of resources and drive up costs, which for poor farmers can be prohibitive. It can undermine traditional practices such as when farmers save seeds from one year to the next, exchange them with other farmers, or use them to breed their own new varieties of crops.

Not all GM crops are developed by privately companies, though, as some publicly funded research centres are also trying to develop GM varieties as global public goods.

Other arguments against GM crops – that they pose a health threat to consumers or a genetic threat to wild species or to non-GM crops – are not well supported by scientific evidence. This does not mean however that no threat exists, but it suggests that GM crops should be monitored and regulated carefully, especially as the process of genetic modification could have unforeseen and unintended consequences.

GM crops usually go through a series of tests before they can be grown commercially. These take place initially in laboratories or ‘biosafety’ greenhouses before the crops can be tested in open fields. For GM foods, it is usual for crops to be tested for safety first on animals and then on human volunteers.

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety makes it compulsory for nations to pass biosafety laws before they can grow GM crops commercially. These laws are intended to ensure that countries can ensure that the development and use of GM crops and other organisms do not threaten human health or the environment.

The protocol was created to protect biodiversity from any potential threats that genetically modified organisms might pose. It allows countries that are party to the protocol to ban imports of GM organisms, requires exporters to label any shipments that contain GM products.

REPORTING TIPS
Genetically modified crops polarise opinions sharply and journalists should be wary of the claims of both the pro (e.g. biotechnology industry) and anti (e.g. environmental organisations) camps, which both have their own biases.

Indeed, to report effectively on this subject, journalists will need to do more than just present the two opposing extremes of view.

One important thing to remember is that the term “GM crops” covers a huge range of different types of crops that have been modified for many different reasons. So it is often not useful to report on them as a group, or to compare one kind of GM crop with another.

Reporters should also take care when comparing the yield of a GM crop with its non-GM counterpart. This is because the GM crop might not have been modified with the explicit aim of increasing its yield.

When reporting on what farmers think about GM crops it is important to look beyond the simple story of how the crops fares in the field and instead consider the economic and social dimensions of what it means for a farmer to use (or not use) a GM product.

This means looking not only at whether GM crops are safe for consumption and the wider environment but also at how they will be used and who will ultimately benefit from their use (e.g Farmers? Consumers? Multinational corporations?).

Reporters should also note that GM technology is just one of many other types of agricultural biotechnology (such as cloning and tissue culture), but often they are all lumped together and either praised or criticised.

For more discussion of how to report on GM crops, read this article by Curtis Brainard in the Columbia Journalism Review and this SciDev.Net editorial by David Dickson.

CASE STUDY: Golden Rice
More than 100 million people worldwide do not have enough vitamin A. This causes 1-2 million premature deaths and around half a million cases of permanent blindness. One way to overcome this is with dietary supplements — such as pills or injections – but another is to more eat beta-carotene, which our bodies convert into vitamin A.

Beta carotene exists in rice, which is a staple food in many countries where vitamin A deficiency is a health problem, but not in the parts of rice that people eat. In 2000, after 8 years of research, scientists created ‘Golden Rice’ a new GM variety that produces beta-carotene in the parts that people consume.

This GM variety contained two foreign genes — one from the daffodil plant and one from a soil bacterium – that were inserted into the rice DNA in a way that ensure they were only activated in the parts of rice that we eat.

With further research, scientists produced ‘Golden Rice 2’, using a gene from maize to produce 23 times more beta carotene than the original GM variety. Tests with volunteers show that people can absorb the beta-carotene in Golden Rice but so far none is available as food as it has yet to clear the regulatory procedures.

More than 30 companies that hold the intellectual property rights to the processes and products involved in making Golden Rice but they have agreed to grant ‘humanitarian use licences’ to subsistence farmers to enable them to use the rice, and keep and replant the seed.

Opponents of Golden Rice say it would be better to encourage people to eat a more a varied diet containing foods rich in vitamin A such as sweet potato, leafy green vegetables and fruit. Others fear that acceptance of Golden Rice would make it easier for companies to promote other GM crops.

For more information, see the website of the Golden Rice Network, which is coordinated by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

LINKS TO OTHER TOOLKIT PAGES
Adaptation to Climate Change
Climate Change and Agriculture
Food Safety
UN Convention on Biological Diversity

FURTHER READING
International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development
Foresight: Global Food and Farming Futures
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety
Guardian: The war over GM is back. Is the truth any clearer?
International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA)
SciDev.Net – Agriculture and environment pages
The Golden Rice Project

The main problem chemicals are sulphur dioxide (produced when coal or oil are burnt to generate power, and when volcanoes erupt) and nitrogen oxides (which arise from cars and other burning processes, including natural lightning strikes).

Acid rain has been linked to a number of harmful impacts on forests, soils, lakes and human health, but there are some scientific disagreements about how serious the problem is.

It has been blamed for a decline in tree growth in European and North American forests, possibly by reducing the nutrient content of soil or damaging the protective surface of leaves.

A side effect of acid rain is that it can enhance the ability of rainwater to draw toxic metals such as aluminium out of the soil and into rivers, lakes and water supplies.

An increase the acidity of lake water can also threaten plant and animal life directly — especially invertebrates such a crustaceans and molluscs and the eggs of bigger creatures such as fish.

The airborne acids that combine with water to form acid rain can also cause problems in their ‘dry’ state, forming a dust that some research suggests can increase lung disease if it is inhaled.

Acid rain became a well-known problem in Western Europe and North America in the 1970s and 1980s, and this led to legislation to curtail the threat.

Today, there are major new sources of acid rain such as Asia’s industrial centres and major cities with growing numbers of cars.

ALTERNATIVES/SOLUTIONS
An early response to acid rain was to use taller chimneys at power stations, but this just meant the acid rain fell further away.

A more effective solution is to reduce air pollution at its source. This can be done by reducing reliance on fossil fuels and by taking steps to stop pollutants from entering the atmosphere.

One way to do this is by installing ‘scrubbers’ in the chimneys of power stations and industrial facilities. Scrubbers use wet lime/limestone (or a a mixture of water and powdered limestone) to remove sulphur before it reaches the outside air.

Other approaches in the energy sector include using low-sulphur coal, converting coal to cleaner gas via gasification, or burning coal in the presence of calcium in limestone, which reacts with the sulphur in coal to produce a harmless waste product.

Cars can be fitted with catalytic converters, which remove chemicals that cause acid rain from exhaust fumes.

In areas where acid rain falls, limestone can be added to soils, lakes and rivers to reduce their acidity but this ‘liming’ is an expensive, and only temporary fix.

Some countries have used legislation to promote such solutions to acid rain. The Acid Rain Program under the US Clean Air Act led to a rapid and cost-effective decline in pollutants through a ‘cap and trade’ approach, as described in this SolveClimate blog post.

REPORTING TIPS
Acid rain is an example of a trans-boundary problem — the impacts can occur very far from the source of the pollution. This makes it hard to prove the cause of the problem.

Acid rain is also a complex story to cover as it is hard to assess the extent of impacts (on forests for instance) and link them to pollution as opposed to other causes such as droughts, fires or pests.

Journalists must also remember that there are also natural sources of the pollutants that cause acid rain, such as wildfires and volcanic eruptions. However, it is though that the majority of these chemical come from fossil-fuel use and industry.

A good source for journalists covering acid rain in Asia is the Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in East Asia, which operates in 13 countries.

The UNEP Acid Rain and Emissions Reduction in Asia project created a database of experts that journalists might also find useful.

For news and story ideas, the India Environmental Portal produces summaries of research papers and online news about acid rain in India, China and other Asian nations.

UK-based Earthwire does the same but with a more international coverage of stories. Acid News is a quarterly magazine that focuses on acid rain stories from a largely European perspective.

CASE STUDY – Impacts of Asia’s acid rain
According to the World Resources Institute, acid rain is now particularly problematic in areas of southeast China, northeast India, Thailand, and the Republic of Korea that are in or downwind of urban and industrial centres.

Research in the late 1990s has shown high levels of acid rain in these areas and has linked this to declines in crop yields and tree growth.

As Asia industrializes its emissions of sulphur dioxide are expected to rise rapidly, nearly doubling between 2000 and 2020 according to some estimates.

LINKS TO OTHER TOOLKIT PAGES
Air Pollution (Outdoor)
Waste Management

FURTHER READING
The Air Pollution & Climate Secretariat (formerly the Swedish NGO Secretariat on Acid Rain)

These impacts include rising seas, changes to patterns of disease, risks of floods and droughts, heatwaves and possibly more, stronger hurricanes.

Adaption refers to actions that countries, companies and communities can talk to minimize these threats. In the long term, climate change can only be tackled by mitigation – steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions – and the faster this happens, the less adaptation will be needed.

But even if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped immediately, the planet would continue to warm for many years (see Greenhouse Gases / Greenhouse Effect). This makes adaptation all the more urgent.

Adaptation includes things like building defenses to protect coastal areas from rising seas, switching to drought or flood resistant crop varieties, and improving early warning systems to warn of heat-waves, disease outbreaks and climate-related disasters such as hurricanes.

Index-linked insurance or micro-insurance is another form of adaptation. Policyholders can claim money on the basis of a measurable climate-related event, such as a rainfall or temperature level, rather than a financial loss. This makes it easier to implement in poor countries where conventional insurance is unavalaible.

Conservative estimates put the costs of adaptation at around US$100 billion per year by 2020, but critics say the true figure will be much higher as these estimates do not include all of the sectors that need to adapt. Funding adaptation will be an immense challenge as it is not as commercially attractive as mitigation projects (see Climate Finance).

Under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change the world’s Least Developed Countries have received funding to identify their most urgent adaptation needs and to draw up National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs).

The parties to the convention agreed in 2001 to fund these programmes through a Least Developed Countries Fund, which wealthier nations were to contribute to. But by early 2010, only three of the 43 of the 50 LDCs that had submitted their NAPAs had received any funding.

Another more promising source of funding for the developing countries is the Adaptation Fund. This does not depend on government funding but grows through a two percent levy on any transactions under the Clean Development Mechanism, which was set up under the UN Framework’s Convention on Climate Change‘s Kyoto Protocol.

The Adaptation Fund could soon be a major source of funding for developing nations.

REPORTING TIPS
For detailed scientific information on adaptation to climate change, journalists can turn to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the report of its Working Group II which covered impacts, vulnerability and adaptation.

Governments should be developing plans for adaptation which allow journalists an opportunity to track progress and report on the effectiveness of the strategies being developed.

To report on adaptation in action, journalists may need to travel to rural areas to find stories about what climatic threats people face and how they are adapting to them.

When information is lacking, journalists can look to other countries that face similar climate impacts to see if there are adaptation activities there that are relevant to their local audiences.

The UNFCCC website has a database of local coping strategies, which journalists can search by hazard (e.g. drought) and impact.

For stories about adaptation in the world’s least developed nations, the UNFCCC website, also has details of the National Adaptation Programmes of Action in each country.

Other good sources for journalists include the UNDP Adaptation Learning Mechanism and the Eldis dossier on adaptation. It includes detailed information organized by theme and region, as well as a comprehensive listing of organizations that work on adaptation and are good sources for journalists.

Another useful source is the Community Based Adaptation Exchange, which is an online network with hundreds of members who are sharing information on adaptation.

The WeAdapt website, also includes contact details of experts in this field and has a Google Earth layer with information on adaptation around the world.

CASE STUDY – Reducing the vulnerability of coastal communities
Cavite City in the Philippines is at risk from rising sea levels and cyclones which can both erode the land and lead to flooding, which can threaten supplies of drinking water, and make water-borne disease more likely.

Local people have developed their own coping mechanisms such as building houses in stilts, placing sand-bags along the coast, strengthening houses, shifting to safer livelihoods, and evacuating to higher ground during storms.

These community-level adaptations to change are not well integrated into an overall progamme of city-wide action. Larger-scale government led activities such as building shoreline defenses and moving people to safer areas are very costly and have been poorly implemented.

When coastal communities were consulted about adaptation to climate change they proposed new solutions. These included setting up community-based early warning systems and micro-credit and micro-insurance schemes to help the poor reduce their vulnerability and exposure to financial risk.

LINKS TO OTHER TOOLKIT PAGES
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

FURTHER READING
Adaptation Fund
UNFCCC – Adaptation
Assessing the Costs of Adaptation to Climate Change

Indoor smoke is one of the world’s biggest contributors to ill health and premature death, with women and children in rural areas of developing nations at greatest risk.

When people burn wood, animal dung, crop waste or coal for cooking and heating this creates a lot of indoor smoke that is laden with pollutants such as carbon monoxide, benzene, nitrous and sulphur oxides, formaldehyde and harmful particles.

These pollutants are known to increase the risk of acute lower respiratory infections (the biggest killer of children under five), lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

In urban areas, a long list of other pollutants can also threaten human health inside homes, workplaces and public buildings.

The more dangerous of these pollutants include: asbestos from insulating and other building materials; formaldehyde gas from carpets and wood; radon; vapours from paints, plastics and cleaning products; and cigarette smoke.

Biological sources of indoor air pollution include fungal spores, pollen and bacteria. People and their pets also contribute to the problem, by shedding flakes of skin, hair, etc.

Dust mites that live in carpets and bedding produce tiny pellets of faecal matter. Even houseplants, which can help to improve air quality, can cause problems by producing pollen, mould and dust.

Indoor air pollution in urban areas has been linked to health problems that include lethargy, headaches, dizziness, eye irritation and allergies, as well as more serious complaints including respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

The term ‘sick building syndrome’ has been used to describe the situation when a large number of people who live or work in the same building report various symptoms.

ALTERNATIVES / SOLUTIONS
Indoor smoke can best tackled by replacing biomass fuels with gaseous fuels like kerosene, butane and propane, and by using more efficient stoves.

Good ventilation is also important for reducing health threats from indoor smoke and from other kinds of air pollution in both rural and urban settings.

Some countries have building regulations that includes standards for ventilation, and controls on the use of substances such as asbestos and formaldehyde in houses and workplaces.

Many countries are also moving to limit people’s exposure to cigarette smoke by banning smoking in workplaces.

REPORTING TIPS
For story ideas, journalists can visit the Indoor Air Pollution Updates blog, which tracks news about this issue.

Reporting on indoor air pollution linked to household stoves is relatively straightforward as there is strong scientific evidence for how indoor fires can harm health and for what safer alternatives are.

There are bigger challenges for journalists reporting on health problems linked to other kinds of indoor air pollution, as there is a such a wide range of possible threats.

If an individual chemical (e.g. asbestos or leaded paint) is suspected to be causing health problems, journalists will need to see if there are other possible causes and seek scientific opinions about what is most likely to be to blame.

If local health authorities have been alerted to the problem they may be conducting investigations that include assessments of air quality that journalists can report on.

Journalists should interview a large number of people to assess whether the symptoms are widespread among people who use the same building – and check whether the problem has occurred before.

Another line of inquiry is to check whether buildings and materials comply with the relevant health and safety regulations.

Reporters should also be aware of the relationship between indoor air pollution and climate change.

Black soot in smoke from fires helps to trap heat in our atmosphere and about one-third of this soot comes from households burning fuel.

The cheapest solution to indoor smoke is to promote use of fossil fuels such as butane, whose combustion releases greenhouse gases that also contribute to climate change.

This is however a much faster and cheaper solution that waiting for widespread access to electricity from renewable sources such as wind or solar power.

CASE STUDY – Formaldehyde in California and woodsmoke in Kenya
A 2009 report showed that two-thirds of single-family homes built in California in recent years had excessive levels of formaldehyde, a chemical present in many building materials and household products.

Formaldehyde is linked to both acute health problems such as sore throats and more serious diseases including cancer.

The study found that the reason for this was that residents rarely opened their windows for ventilation because they were concerned about safety, noise and dust.

In rural areas of developing countries, the major source of indoor air pollution comes from fires for cooking.

In Kenya, for instance, the nongovernmental organisation Practical Action found that smoke levels inside some homes were 100 times higher than international safety standards.

Practical Action worked with women there to develop a simple smoke hood, which has reduced smoke levels in their houses by up to 80 percent.

For more case studies see the Toolkit pages on asbestos, benzeneand radon.

LINKS TO OTHER TOOLKIT PAGES
Air Pollution (Outdoor)
Asbestos

FURTHER READING
World Bank – Indoor Air Pollution
World Health Organization – Indoor Air Pollution
Partnership for Clean Indoor Air
Smoke — the Killer in the Kitchen (Report by Practical Action).

The main natural sources of air pollution are wildfires and volcanic eruptions, which produce smoke, dust and ash containing hazardous substances.

Human activities that produce air pollution include processes involving combustion (transport, forest clearance, industrial processes and incinerators), warfare and chemical accidents.

Airborne pollutants such as sooty particles, low-level ozone, and sulphur and nitrous oxides can contribute to lung cancer, cardiovascular illnesses, asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory disorders.

Globally, outdoor air pollution causes as many as one million early deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

Air pollution is especially bad in cities with heavy industry or large numbers of cars.

In 2009, the Times of India reported on research by India’s National Allergy Asthma-Bronchitis Institute. It showed that half of non-smokers in Kolkata had lung disease that would normally be found only in heavy smokers, and said outdoor air pollution was largely to blame.

The problem is not confined to developing nations. A 2010 report by a UK parliamentary committee concluded that air pollution may cause up to 50,000 premature deaths in the country each year.

Forest fires that occur naturally or are started on purpose (such as to clear land) can create vast amounts of airborne pollution that travels long distances. In dry conditions, such fires can burn widely, triggering dense “haze” that can cause regional health and transportation problems.

Other air pollutants of special concern are covered in more detail elsewhere in the Toolkit — see Acid Rain, Dioxins, Heavy Metals, Ozone and Radiation.

Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change are also a form of air pollution.

ALTERNATIVES / SOLUTIONS
People can do little to protect themselves from air pollution so government action is needed to control pollutants. The World Health Organization says stricter controls on air pollution could reduce deaths in cities by 15 percent.

Many countries have set emissions standards to limit the amount of pollution from industry and/or cars but these vary greatly between countries are not always monitored and enforced effectively.

China and Malaysia, for instance, use an Air Pollution Index which measures levels of key pollutants such as carbon monoxide and airborne particles.

Efforts to address the health effects of air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels will also help to limit climate change.

REPORTING TIPS
The World Health Organization has a large collection of information that can help journalists who are reporting on outdoor air pollution.

This includes a detailed fact-sheet and air quality guidelines for various pollutants in all world regions, which are available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

Other useful sources include the Air Pollution and Climate Secretariat, an alliance of four Swedish environmental organizations, and Earthwire, which is tracks news stories about air pollution.

CASE STUDY – Haze in Southeast Asia
Large areas of Southeast Asia are periodically stricken with an intense form of air pollution known as haze, which is caused by soot, dust, smoke and other particles.

Haze can be so severe that it drastically restricts visibility at ground level and can trigger a variety of respiratory illnesses.

Haze was particularly bad in 1997 when rampant burning in Indonesian forests led to a haze cloud that extended across much of Southeast Asia (as shown in this satellite image).

The 1997 haze led to direct economics costs of billions of dollars and prompted the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to agree a Regional Haze Action Plan.

In 2002 they signed an Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution but Indonesia – the source of many of the forest fires – did not sign it.

This has caused international tensions when fires in Indonesia led to haze in other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.

At one point during 2006 there were at least 500 fires burning everyday in the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

In the provincial capital Pontianak the air pollution index reached 913. An index of 101-200 is considered ‘unhealthy’ while 300-550 is ‘dangerous’.

LINKS TO OTHER TOOLKIT PAGES
Acid Rain
Air Pollution (Indoor)
Climate Change
Dioxins
Heavy Metals
Oil Spills and Chemical Disasters
Ozone, CFCs and the Montreal Protocol
Waste Management

FURTHER READING
World Health Organization – Air Pollution

Asbestos is a problem because it is easy to inhale as fibres of the material are so small they are invisible to the human eye.

People who inhale asbestos fibres can develop cause serious illnesses, including malignant mesothelioma (always fatal), lung cancer (usually fatal), and asbestosis (not always fatal but very debilitating) and diffuse pleural thickening (not fatal).

These diseases tend to affect people later in life and cigarette smokers are at much greater risk. The World Health Organization says asbestos kills nearly 100,000 people each year.

Although people can be affected by exposure in the home, there is a greater risk to people who are exposed to through their work, such as by producing asbestos, or using it to make products.

An entire Australian town called Wittenoom, which grew up around an asbestos mine, has closed and been evacuated because it is contaminated. In the United Kingdom asbestos it is the single greatest cause of work-related deaths.

As asbestos has come under greater control in developed nations, its producers have increasingly aimed at markets in developing nations.

In addition to these man-made risks, naturally occurring asbestos is also thought to be linked to mesothelioma.

ALTERNATIVES
Some countries, such as European Union member states and Australia have banned asbestos entirely, while others have imposed partial bans. Many safer alternatives exist – such as fiberglass, stone-wool and glass-wool as insulating materials.

However, some developing countries, including India and China, continue to use asbestos in millions of homes, factories and schools, etc. The most common use is corrugated asbestos-cement sheets or “A/C Sheets” for roofing and for side walls.

Five types of asbestos are included in the list of chemicals controlled by the Rotterdam Convention, which prevents the trans-boundary movement of hazardous chemicals without the prior informed consent of recipient countries.

However, chrysotile — the form which accounts for almost all of the world trade — is not on the list. In recent years there have been repeated attempts to include it but these have failed as Canada — a major exporter of chrysotile — and other governments have blocked the consensus needed to get it listed.

REPORTING TIPS
Don’t assume that something is asbestos just because it looks like it.

Asbestos is only a risk when its fibres are airborne – but they can become airborne when people handle the material and, especially, if there is a fire or demolition work.

Check whether national planning or building laws permit or restrict the use of asbestos, and where the burden of responsibility for upholding any safety rules lies.

Find out if there have been any legal cases involving asbestos, such as claims for compensation for injury, or to punish people who use asbestos illegally.

Find out where asbestos comes from. Is it produced in your country or exported from another nation? Some countries ban the sale asbestos, yet allow companies there to export it to developing nations where legislation is weak.

Check the Rotterdam Convention website for details of your country’s status and contact details for the designated national authority.

CASE STUDIES – Long term reporting on asbestos
In Australia, an investigative journalist called Matt Peacock has spent 30 years reporting on asbestos and human health. This page describes his findings and has an audio interview.

South African journalist Ronnie Morris, also spent years reporting on communities and workers whose health was harmed by asbestos exposure.

Awarding-winning US journalist Andrew Scheider’s ColdTruth.com website includes many stories on asbestos.

LINKS TO OTHER TOOLKIT PAGES
Air Pollution (Indoor)
Rotterdam Convention

FURTHER READING
UK Health and Safety Executive: Asbestos
World Health Organization: Elimination of asbestos-related diseases
European Trade Union Institute: Special Report – Asbestos in the world [PDF]
International Ban Asbestos Secretariat