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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."

Taiwanese environmental film festival: shifting from nuclear to climate fossil fuels

tschuetz

From Naomi Goddard (News Lens, March 10, 2023)

"Originally launched in 2013 under the name Nuclear Film Festival (核電影), the biannual event was created to draw attention to the organizers, Green Citizens’ Action Alliance (GCAA)’s concerns about nuclear energy. In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, the festival showcased films advocating for a nuclear-free world and addressing energy-related issues.

However, over the years the festival has expanded its focus to include films about climate change and the fossil fuel industry. As the urgency of the climate crisis has become increasingly pressing, the festival has evolved alongside it. This year, the festival has been renamed to Climate Tipping Point Film Festival to reflect its broader focus on global heating and the need for systemic change to mitigate its effects."

Pollution Reporter Workflows

Carly.Rospert
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The Pollution Reporter app allows users to: (1) make a pollution report of something they see or sense, (2) search different polluters in Chemical Valley and access data on their emissions, (3) look up health symptoms and see what chemical pollutants might be linked to these symptoms, and (4) learn about specific chemical pollutants.

The workflows are meant to provide impacted individuals access to important information that can help them link health harms to specific polluters and chemicals from the nearby Chemical Valley. The reporting workflow also allows individuals to create reports, and thus their own data, on things they see or sense that might not be captured by industry monitoring systems. In this way, workflows both streamline access to important and relevant information while also enabling the capturing of experiential data.

Pollution Reporter Data

Carly.Rospert
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The Pollution Reporter app includes data on: (1) polluters in Chemical Valley and a list of its chemical emissions, (2) health symptoms and the chemicals that are associated with that symptom, and (3) chemical pollutants that are emitted in Chemical Valley and the associated health impacts and polluters. Users are encouraged to search within these three categories and see the interconnectedness between polluters, chemical pollutants, and health symptoms. This helps users attach responsibility for health harms to chemicals and the corporations that make them. Users are also encouraged to submit their own data through a pollution report of something they see or sense. 

The Pollution Reporter App translates and connects government, industry-reported, and peer reviewed sources of data into accessible information about the known health effects of pollutants. The creators of the app recognized the limitations to government data in that it is (1) created by Industry, (2) disconnected from the health harms that pollution causes, (3) hard to get, (4) inaccurate, tending to underreport harms, (5) out-dated, (6) and usually organized one chemical at a time, not accounting for cumulative exposure of multiple chemicals. 

Participation in Pollution Reporter

Carly.Rospert
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The key participation that the Pollution Reporter app supports is the ability for a user to report a pollution event, spill, or leak to the Ontario Ministry of Environment, making it easier for community members to report problems to the Spill Action Centre. The app assists in making the report, which is then sent through the users own email, and allows users to share on social media or keep a record of their reports.

This  reporting workflow is one of the main features of the app (one of four) and is located in the bottom navigation bar as the report icon (next to the polluters, chemicals, and health symptoms icons).