Air pollution in Vietnam and predictable deaths
This writing was my assignment for the course coded COM. Three weeks later, I heard a lot of bad news about the air pollution happening in my country throughout mass media, fortunately, Danang, my hometown did not have the same issues with air quality but sea and forests.
“Why do you decide to leave our country?” I asked some questions like that whenever my friends left me and their country to fly to another land. Different people gave me various answers, but overall, these answers have the same sad point that they aim to relish a better living environment. This answer seems to be ridiculous to me at that time.
“It is so weird! A better living environment? We all grew up healthily in this environment, right here in our hometown”. I always wonder whenever I think about the above idea.
The time goes by, throughout the time after graduation, while working for a company, I found more and more news related to environmental pollution happening in my country day by day. Once again, this news cannot catch my mind because of other more essential concerns of daily life. On a scorching day of summer 2019, I visited Hung, one of my old friends who is dying in the late stages of lung cancer. He has never smoked but had worked in the north of Vietnam in a factory for a long time; the doctor said to us that the air in that area is one of the leading causes, not just because of working conditions. After visiting, I suddenly remembered what my friend said before they move to foreign nations. Their answers turn out a prediction for Hung and me today.
From 1945, there were millions of Vietnamese dying because of civil wars as well as the Second Indochina War. Many decades later, more than 10,000 deaths every year because of road traffic crashes in Vietnam, according to a report of Road safety in Viet Nam by the World Health Organization. However, nowadays, Air Pollution in Vietnam will soon overcome the traffic accident to become one of the significant causes of death. Meanwhile, many Vietnamese, including me and maybe you have never thought that air pollution can harm people’s health like that until we can read these figures. In an interview of Vietnam Investment Review for the article namely “Air Pollution Is Vietnam’s Silent Killer,” Mr. Le Viet Phu gave a statement:
“The number of deaths caused by air pollution is four times higher than those caused by traffic accidents, which is about 11,000 per year. It is expected that the annual number of deaths due to air pollution will rise to over 100,000 by 2035..” (Dat, 2018, para. 18).
If you wonder how air pollution can make too many people lose their life, let's imagine fatal diseases in Vietnam in the past few years, you will immediately think of heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and so on. The answer is exactly, and these diseases are all related to air pollution as stated by the World Health Organization, in which “more than 60 000 deaths from heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia in Vietnam in 2016 were linked to air pollution.” (World Health Organization, 2018). When my friends and I were a little kid, we used to think lung cancer comes from smoking habits only, but recent researches and data showed how dangerous air pollution is in our lives today.
It is clear that no one of us can believe air pollution can kill people day by day silently. When we witness a traffic accident on the street, we immediately remind ourselves of being careful of road transportation. But when someone died because of diseases related to air pollution, we do not mind about this issue, even the relatives of these victims as I used to. Besides, we all know the leading causes of air pollution from primary and high schools, including transportation, production or even agricultural activities; however, these factors do not kill people, so we seem to ignore them for a long time in school. As a result, the less we do concern about air pollution, the more people will die because of it. Then, some deaths are predictable when we were students, but we do not concern about it anymore.
Soon, I assure you that such deaths from air pollution will be predictable for not only me but also you and your relatives alike. In a call from the World Health Organization, I do think it is time for us to aware of what we are breathing every day:
Air pollution does not recognize borders. Improving air quality demands sustained and coordinated government action at all levels. Countries, relevant ministries, agencies, organizations and public people need to work together on solutions. (World Health Organization, 2018, More countries taking action section, para. 6)
Indeed, the government soon have its initial activities, in which they launched a “national action plan on controlling air quality until 2020 with a vision to 2025, planning to monitor emissions and improve air quality” (Dat, 2018). While waiting for this long term plan, you should better have your actions together with your friends — young Vietnameses in protecting the environment in general as well as the air in particular. Now, if you are reading this article, you all can know about how we will die in the future, but you can choose to move to another dreamland like my friends did or work together make this prediction to become untrue. However, if you decide to leave, you can find it easy to go alone, but how about others, including your relatives, your parents, and your friends.
Ironically, while air pollution in Vietnam soon becomes alarming issues, the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Mr. Tran stated that the sweeping is also one of the factors of making air pollution.
Nguyen, N (2019, December 19). Quét rác mặt đường cũng là nguyên nhân phát thải ô nhiễm không khí. Báo điện tử của Đài tiếng nói Việt Nam. Retrieved from https://vov.vn/tin-24h/quet-rac-mat-duong-cung-la-nguyen-nhan-phat-thai-o-nhiem-khong-khi-991843.vov
Dat, T (2018, February 26). Air pollution is Vietnam’s silent killer. Vietnam investment review. Retrieved from https://www.vir.com.vn/air-pollution-is-vietnams-silent-killer-56542.html
Le, V. P. (2017). Health and Economic Effects of Air Pollution in Vietnam [PowerPoint presentation]. Retrieved from Fulbright School of Public Policy and Management: https://www.fsppm.fuv.edu.vn/en/news-events/on-campus/estimating-health-and-economic-effects-of-air-pollution-a-case-study-of-ho-chi-minh-city/
World Health Organization Representative Office in Vietnam. (2018). More than 60 000 deaths in Vietnam each year linked to air pollution. Retrieved October 28, 2019, from http://www.wpro.who.int/vietnam/mediacentre/releases/2018/air_pollution_vietnam/en/
