Press Release
April 17, 2008

Like rice and water, oxygen too may become a pricey commodity -- Loren

Senator Loren Legarda warned today that the time may come when the people of the world would be forced to buy oxygen just as they buy bottled water right now, citing the worsening air pollution worldwide.

Legarda issued the statement in view of the Earth Day celebrations on April 22, revisiting a speech she delivered about 10 years ago in Davao City in launching and founding the tree-planting environmental organization Luntiang Pilipinas.

"I've said it then, and I'm saying it now: the idea of buying oxygen because the air that we breathe has become so contaminated with pollutants is not at all a far-fetched idea," Legarda said.

"If 20 years ago we thought buying bottled water was preposterous, nobody is laughing now that we shell upwards of P15 for a small bottle of mineral water. Like water and rice, oxygen will also become a scarce and pricey commodity in the future if air pollution is not addressed."

The senator said that unless the global trend of worsening air pollution is reversed, the sale of oxygen will become as commonplace as the hawking of bottled water.

She cited the popularity of oxygen bars in Japan and the sale in the Philippines at present of canned oxygen.

An author of the landmark Clean Air Act, Legarda cited a 2007 estimate by the Philippine Environment Monitor that 4,968 people from Metro Manila die prematurely each year due to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases from exposure to polluted air.

The number accounts for 12 percent of all deaths in the metropolis, which the monitoring group would said was the highest in any urban area in the country.

In terms of premature deaths due to pollution, Metro Manila was followed by Metro Cebu's 608, Davao City's 414, Zamboanga City's 240, Iloilo City's 204, Cabanatuan's 134, according to the report.

Worldwide, about 2.4 million people die each year from causes directly attributable to air pollution, according to the World Health Organization.

"The cost of treatment and lost income from these environmental diseases were estimated to be a staggering P14 billion each year," said Legarda, who was awarded by United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), in 2001 in Turin, Italy for her significant contributions for the protection of the environment.

The concentration of particulate matter used as an indicator of polluted air was found to be three times higher on average in urban roadsides than in rural areas, she added.

"It is for this reason that Luntiang Pilipinas has been planting trees on urban, city and national roadsides where the pollutants are most concentrated due to the volume of passing motor vehicles," Legarda said.

"This organization of dedicated individual, corporate, academic, community-based and government volunteers has come a long way in helping ease air pollution levels by planting over two million trees since its founding."

Legarda said Luntiang Pilipinas is unique because it did not duplicate or replace tree-planting in denuded forests and mountainous areas.

She pointed out that trees serve as the lungs of Mother Earth and are essential to the survival of human beings and most other species.

"Trees supply us with the oxygen we breathe, while we exhale the carbon dioxide they require. It's a symbiotic relationship between us and trees. In absorbing other pollutants, they provide us cleaner and fresher air."

According to the World Bank, some 18 million people live in cities in the Philippines that do not pass air pollution standards of the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). These areas have the largest health burden from air pollution, it said.

Legarda said she made it a personal crusade to push the passage of the Clean Air Act to reverse the air pollution trends. The law banned the use of leaded fuel and smoking in public places, among other measures.

"While oxygen bars are considered a luxury and the canned oxygen on sale at supermarkets are intended for sports-related activities, there may come a time when all of us would have to buy oxygen as an alternative to breathing polluted air," she said.

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