Breathless

By Michael L. McManus

What if someone told you that you will likely die a few years before your time? And what if they told you it was mostly because of where you live. Yes, what place on the earth, what city in particular you live in. Seoul might have a life expectancy index (lei) of -3.7, meaning that if your biological age expectancy is 84, you might plan to die sometime while you are 80, just less than four years before your expected time. Now, we all know we die on God’s time chiros, not on our calculated time chronos. Yetwe have all these man-made and completely non-man-made, natural forces to shorten our predictions. Cigarettes are man-made killers or life shorteners, while the yellow dust that is blown in from neighboring lands is something over which we have no control. Or, do we?

Last night was a real life shortener in Seoul, especially for anyone who was outside in the city after 11pm. The air quality index (aqi) was 330 where I live and the color code was beyond red. It was an eyrie shade of brown. I have two air purifiers in my medium size apartment which were both working real hard to keep the color in the yellow to green zone. Before I owned these, I might have opened a few windows to get the “fresh cross breeze” through the apartment from outside. It could have been a night with a few sneezes and a morning with some watery eyes and throat clearing. Sorry, I have become a recent student of air quality and what we can do about it especially when we don’t own it.

Just have a look at Asia Air Quality Index real-time maps. We here in South Korea are always on the path of ominous waves of brown to purple to red blotches of heavy unhealthy pollution. The peninsula is the dumping ground. Economists could calculate with extrapolations the monetary effect on South Korea’s government, healthcare systems, and individual lives. A minus number would be the result. We are trapped. We don’t generate much pollution on our own. We bear much of the cost of China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and North Korea. It is an overall negative contributor to quality of life and health in South Korea. Has become Northeast Asia’s “trail of tears”, “trail of fears”, and “burden of years”. We must be repaid for the suffering families with COPD and early death. Something we, here do not own.

Yes, I said own it. I say it this way because the real issue from now on into our childrens’ futures is that the deadly air pollution is actually not an intangible phenomenon. It is actual matter, ultra-small particles of specific matter and chemicals that float around at an almost weightless condition, yet can travel in dense clouds for hundreds and thousands of miles. These particles don’t just appear, they are somewhere else and become airborne somewhere else. They aren’t owned by or sourced by South Korea; they come from Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, and North Korea. In particular, South Korea and Japan “inherit” them. Many of the killing particles are silicon-sand derivated from desertification across these originating lands, and pick up further contamination from carbon-burning cities beyond our borders. It would be like if a radiation leak resulted from a contaminated power plant, or from a nuclear test, many would hold the country in which it occurred liable for damages to property and health, even at the collective level. If such contamination was judged as willful, it could hardened that position so that the generating nation(s) could be held liable, and economies of masses of people and their leaders could be ruined. I don’t want my children to breathe air that is a life shortener from negligence or arrogance caused in other countries.

But, how can we hold them accountable? Companies can be carbon-taxed, but can countries or leaders of those countries? The ultimate carbon tax could pave the road to the Hague for the originators.

Now, some neighboring countries did contribute trees to originating lands, because trees are the only way we have to slow down or arrest desertification. Critics claimed the trees were used to beautify highways instead of being used strategically against the combination of wind and the yellow dust.

Our pulmonary systems are amazing things in our human bodies that seem to have a mind of their own. We can smell some things in life that seem dangerous and we try to take action to stop the source. Much of this yellow dust combined with carbon pollution is unsmellable and we inhale it and it goes to the bottom of our lungs where pure oxygen fights with it to enter our blood stream. The particles are so small and so inorganic, and so deadly, even to include harmful elements like lead, which will never leave our bodies.

I recently saw a good news item on Arirang TV about a group of scientists who have invented a simple method for detecting the amount and type of lung cancer just by analyzing our breath when we exhale. The cancer tissue actually exudes fine particles which are cancer or cancer markers. I don’t want to think what the air quality actually is on the average subway train. We are probably breathing in a nano-universe of stuff from the environment including other people’s breath.

The answer for now is to make our living spaces as clean as possible with electronic cleaners. A more difficult solution is to move to safe cities on the planet which are in the green all of the time, and they exist.

To avoid ultimate liability, leaders must analyze every decision with this question in mind? Will I be held responsible for the actions I take to contribute to contaminated air quality in my or in others’ lands?

This will come to be called “the breath test” and its starting remedy at the global level will be known as “the breath tax”. Rising waters in our coastal cities is a bad thing and may not be stoppable. Brown and radioactive clouds of Asia are life shorteners of a possibly more controllable nature and will shorten the lives of our children and grandchildren. Air is still free if you go to where it is truly free from yellow dust. Air has become an international and border commodity, once free, no longer, but still negotiable. While musing over what we should do, make sure to stay inside and turn on the air purifiers. You will think with more oxygen in your blood, you will not be coughing or hacking as much and just maybe we will live to see a genius social policy solution.

Michael L. McManus writes bi-monthly and exclusively for The Korea Times. He is Founder and President Emeritus of the California International Business University, and is a visiting professor at a number of universities in Seoul. Comments are welcome at mcmismism@aol.com.