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Community Air Pollution Monitoring in Taiwan

tschuetz

From Tu (2020): "In Taiwan, the community air-monitoring projects often have difficulties in identifying the specific pollution sources due to the historical patterns of industrial development that tend to set up dense clusters of different factories in the industrial parks along the west coast (Liu 2012).3 The agglomeration of polluting facilities complicates pollution identification that further creates significant knowledge gaps between the predicted emission, the actual emission, and the community sensory experiences throughout the policy process. This pattern of development has somehow constrained Taiwan community air monitoring to target the specific polluters."

TS: Formosa Plastics' Newspaper

tschuetz

Formosa Plastics publishes a quarterly newspaper called 親親報報 Qin Qin bao (engl. kiss kiss hug). A group of citizen journalists by the Taiwan Environmental Information Center and the initative FPCC Go Away have criticized the newspaper for different attempts of greenwashing (Wu 2015). The newspaper issues include arguments guaranteeing the safety of the 6th Napthha cracker's emissions, interrogrations of research about high PM 2.5 levels in the county and statements about supposed local population growth.

A 2012 blog entry by FPCC Go Away analysis the distribution and publication practices of the newspaper. Notably, the authors point out that an issue of the newspaper addressing PM 2.5 levels was re-published and distributed in the days leading up to a public speech by Prof. Zhan Chang-quan (Department of Public Health at National Taiwan University) who had studied air pollution in the county. 

NOVID, Universities, Privacy, Tracking Apps

lucypei

This CMU-led initiative tries to be ethical by taking privacy seriously in the sense of making users anonymous. Yet you have to allow the app permission to run constantly on your phone and access your mic. The app polices your violation of social distancing with another app user - if you come within 6 feet of someone who reports that they have tested positively for COVID-19, you will be alerted. It is important to know you have been exposed. What are the tradeoffs that come with doing it this way?