Take a deep breath if you dare
With black smog back for the fifth year, Reem Nafie tries to find out why Cairenes can't breathe
If you live in Cairo, you will not need to be told how the black smog that silently but relentlessly tortured the capital last year has returned with a vengeance. Cairenes -- as well as residents of the Qalyubiya and Giza governorates -- are starting to suffer the tell-tale irritable throats and sore or watery eyes.
Those who lived through the hellish weeks of last year's smog season had been hoping for only a brief visit by the annual nuisance. "I suffered terrible asthma attacks and it was impossible to breathe, I had to stay at home for a week. I hope I don't have to go through all that again," said 24- year-old Shereen Abdel-Fattah.
Unfortunately, all evidence suggests she will.
The infamous black smog has not only choked city-dwellers; it made it impossible for Egyptian religious leaders to view the crescent moon marking the start of the holy month of Ramadan from the usual Helwan and Citadel areas. Instead, religious leaders made their determination from outside the city -- in Marsa Matrouh, near the Libyan border.
Since its first appearance in October 1999, black smog has become an expected annual visitor. Every year -- including this one -- government officials have not hesitated to blame the filthy smoke on farmers burning rice-chaff and cotton stalks in the fields of Qalyubiya and Sharqiya.
According to Abdel-Aziz Ibrahim, an employee of the agricultural department in Sharqiya, cotton and rice are cultivated in vast areas in governorates adjacent to Cairo. Daqahliya has 430,000 feddans of rice (a feddan is approximately one acre), which produce some 860,000 tons of chaff. In Sharqiya, 180,000 feddans of rice also leaves behind waste after harvest in October and November. For farmers, burning the rice chaff has always been the easiest way to dispose of the waste and prepare quickly for the winter planting season.
"Burning is the traditional way of getting rid of waste," said Ibrahim. Farmers believe -- as he does -- that there are many positive effects to burning chaff, especially since it makes the land more fertile, increases its productivity, and is a sure way of getting rid of pests.
Although the government has criminalised the practice -- slapping those caught burning chaff with a LE10,000 fine -- the practice still continues. According to Abdel-Samee' Rady, a farmer who has been burning chaff on his Sharqiya farm for the past 19 years, he has no choice but to burn his agricultural waste. "If it accumulates, it will not only become fertile ground for rats and snakes but will also take up precious space on which farmers hope to grow their next crop," he said. Rady explains that he and other farmers are able to escape government punishment by burning their chaff when the "government watchdogs are off duty", which is usually late at night.
On the other hand Mohsen El-Hamed, a nearby farmer, denied that he ever burned waste, but defended his fellow farmers who do. "Why is the government blaming us for the black cloud, when burning waste has been going on for at least the past 30 years? Where was the black cloud then?" El-Hamed asked.
That question was best answered by the Egyptian Meteorological Authority's Ahmed Hammad, who said that other meteorological factors definitely help create what he calls "the black cloud". He pointed out that in places like Cairo, with high levels of air pollution due to car exhaust and garbage burning in shanty areas, burning rice chaff only acts as a "provoking factor".
Tarek Genina, president of EcoConserve, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the chaff burning could not alone be blamed for what citizens are now experiencing. "Results of an American study aimed at finding the reasons for the black cloud showed that car exhaust, tyre and garbage burning, as well as the burning of chaff, all contribute to the formation of the black cloud," Genina explained.
Unfortunately, the Ministry of Agriculture's efforts to promote an agricultural waste management campaign to train farmers to dispose of rice waste in more "environmentally-friendly methods" have failed. Although some of the farmers have switched to the "new agricultural plan" -- recycling at least a third of their chaff into organic fertilizers, the majority still operate the "old way" by simply burning the waste.
When asked why they do not follow the new environmentally-friendly plan, farmers were quick to blame the government. They explained that the government promised them pressers -- machines that compress large amounts of rice chaff and make it easier to dispose of. The government, however, never delivered on its promise. An older farmer, Sayed Abdel-Geleil, explained that the government provided a small number of pressers that were used by "less than a third of the farmers in Sharqiya". Apparently, when the farmers asked for more pressers they learned that one would need to have wasta (connections) to get a presser from the government. "Many of us don't have connections and so we have no other choice but to burn our waste," Abdel-Geleil said.
While it may seem that farmers remain intent on setting their waste alight, the environmental and health costs of burning chaff are grave. According to a chest specialist, Dr Shawky Saleh, the burning waste "emits carbon monoxide and particulates that affect the quality of air and people's health. The black cloud could damage the respiratory system when it is inhaled." Saleh added that the affects depend on a person's exposure to the smog. Smog is particularly harmful to asthmatics and other respiratory disease sufferers. Young children are also vulnerable to the smog, especially as viral infections are common during this part of the year and a particularly harsh flu has been going around in the last month, noted Saleh. The smog may also have long-term affects on the respiratory systems of perfectly healthy people. "A young pregnant girl came to me complaining that she had chest pains. I advised her to try not to go out these days, until the cloud disappears," Saleh explained.
According to Genina, the only way the government could overcome the black smog phenomenon is if all the ministries -- including agriculture, transportation and environment -- monitor public activities that could contribute to the formation of the smog. "If we wait for the cloud to be formed and then think of how to get rid of it, it won't work. But if there is a committee that oversees the actions of all the ministries, it will help prevent the formation of the cloud from the start," Genina said.
