Six years ago, Chile’s National Environment Commission (Conama) hailed the progress being made against air pollution in the Chilean capital. Thanks to the implementation of stricter standards in key areas including vehicle fuels and industrial emissions, air-quality indicators had improved markedly. Conama stated confidently that by 2005, Santiago would no longer have to face extraordinary steps such as mandatory bad-air-day curbs on automobile circulation, industrial activity and school sports.

The forecast, however, proved wrong. Last year, metropolitan Santiago’s regional government was forced to declare two “environmental pre-emergency” days on account of elevated airborne particulate concentrations. And on Aug. 2, authorities announced this year’s third pre-emergency, after concentrations of PM10—particulates of up to 10 microns in diameter—had reached “critical” levels. As part of the pre-emergency, officials prohibited more than 130,000 cars from circulating on Santiago roads, designated seven major city avenues for the exclusive use of public transport, temporarily banned emissions at 552 industrial sites, prohibited the use of residential chimneys and redoubled efforts to scrub particulate matter from Santiago streets. And throughout the city, schools halted physical-education classes and canceled sporting events.

Meanwhile, health clinics in some neighborhoods were flooded with patients of all ages—especially children. At the Consultorio Laurita Vicuña, a private clinic in Santiago’s El Bosque neighborhood, eight children had to be rushed to a nearby hospital on the day of the pre-emergency. Some of them suffered from respiratory syncytial virus, which can lead to pneumonia or severe bronchial illness; still others from obstructive bronchitis. Says Irlandia Silva, the clinic’s director: “What was most serious was not the quantity of sick patients, but the severity of their symptoms.”

Such experiences underscore an unfortunate fact: despite its early success in improving air quality, Santiago has made little anti-smog headway since 2000. The World Health Organization still ranks it as one of the globe’s 10 most polluted cities. When asked why this is so, air-quality experts, government officials and environmentalists cite many factors. Among the most important, they say, are timid and poorly funded air-quality efforts in recent years, the region’s continued growth and the dictates of geography.

Chile’s capital of 6 million people has pollution levels roughly on par with those of other cities its size. But much like Los Angeles, California, it is situated at the foot of mountains—in this case the Andes to the east and the Cordillera de la Costa to the west—that block air circulation. On particularly dry days during the June-through-August winter months, a layer of warm air settles over the city, trapping airborne contaminants below. Thanks to this thermal inversion and the accumulated pollution, temperatures soar and the nearby snow-capped Andes disappear from view.

It was to combat these conditions that Chilean authorities launched aggressive pollution-fighting efforts in 1997—and within three years those efforts had scored impressive gains. But as Chileans learned this April, air-quality progress in recent years has been scant. The occasion was the release of an international audit of air-pollution initiatives. Issued six years after a similar audit, the government-funded report, produced by a panel of three experts, said Santiago’s air quality has “not improved significantly since 2000.” More pointedly, the audit stated: “at this rate Santiago will never enjoy healthy air.”

Among the audit’s findings: PM10 levels exceed by 75% the Chilean standard, which is three times more lenient than the European Union’s PM10 limit; PM2.5—fine particulates for which Chile has yet to set a standard—remain significantly above international norms; ozone is more than double the acceptable level; and carbon monoxide concentrations are 80% above the standard.

Conama officials had previously applauded improvements in particulate levels, pointing out that these had declined at a rate of 2% annually from 2000 to 2005. The audit confirms this reduction, but points out that the rate of decline was significantly less than in the period 1997-2001, when particulate reductions averaged 6% annually. The auditors say that even Los Angeles, almost three times larger than Santiago and one of the world’s smoggiest cities, has “lower air pollution levels in most cases than those found in Santiago.”

James Lents, a former director of California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District and one of the three authors of the Chilean air-pollution audit, says a factor contributing to the underwhelming air-quality record was surprisingly steep budget cuts carried out since 2000. “I was part of Chile’s first audit in 2000,” says Lents. “At that time, we praised Conama for its great progress and saw Santiago as an example for South America. Six years later, I was shocked that the budgets had been cut, and the air pollution levels had stopped going down as rapidly.” Lents, whose collaborators on the audit were Humberto Fuenzalida of Chile and Gerhard Leutert of Switzerland, calls Conama’s staff “strong” but notes the agency’s budget and workforce each has been slashed by more than half under the 2000-6 presidential administration of Ricardo Lagos. Under current conditions, says Lents, “it is not possible for Chilean agencies to work effectively.” He asserts more resources are urgently needed to improve monitoring and boost air-policy research.

Santiago’s main air villains are particulates, ozone and carbon monoxide. Particulates, blamed for respiratory ailments ranging from decreased lung capacity to lung cancer, are an especially acute problem on account of the capital’s abundant industrial emissions, diesel exhaust and dust from unpaved roads. Meanwhile, ozone and carbon monoxide levels keep climbing as gasoline-powered vehicles, the main source of those pollutants, become evermore numerous. To a lesser extent, Santiago also suffers from excessive levels of nitrogen dioxide, caused primarily by gasoline- and diesel-powered engines, and sulfur-dioxide from industrial emissions.

Though Conama’s goal—to bring air emissions in line with national standards by 2010—does not appear to be within reach, officials with the administration of new Chilean President Michelle Bachelet defend the agency’s strategy to date. Ana Lya Uriarte, appointed by Bachelet as Conama’s new director, points to the positives. “The audit also recognized some advances made—for instance, that particulates have declined, that the fuels used in industry and transportation have improved substantially in quality,” she says. “In any case, the study has proposed recommendations that will be analyzed in the framework of the process of reformulating the Prevention Plan for the Decontamination of the Atmosphere [PPDA] this year.”

Indeed, early this month, the Santiago Metropolitan Region office of Conama announced that through November it will be accepting public comments on how to re-formulate a new PPDA, which it hopes to implement in March 2007. At a Sept. 4 press conference, Pablo Badenier, the director of that office, said the greatest challenge through 2010 will be reducing particulate emissions. Badenier cited the need to adapt to evolving realities in the region.

A key one is the 8% annual growth in the number of metropolitan Santiago cars, which in 1990 numbered 450,000 and today total 1.2 million. How Santiago addresses this burgeoning automobile use will have bearing on the frequency with which authorities in coming years will have to declare alerts and the more serious pre-emergencies and emergencies. These stages, which carry progressively tighter restrictions on vehicle circulation, industrial emissions and outdoor activity by schoolchildren, are tied to particulate levels.

“Despite advances to date, from 38 alerts and 37 pre-emergencies in 1997 to 14 alerts and 3 pre-emergencies this year, lowering this pollutant to levels we want it to be at in 2010 will require additional measures,” Badenier said.

Conama officials say they have received US$1.3 million from the government to study more than a dozen possible measures aimed at helping the region attain its 2010 goals. Among the steps being considered are the creation of new measures to implement during the period when smog is at its worst, from April 1 to Aug. 31; tighter curbs on the burning allowed on farmland; and stricter standards for industrial air emissions.

New measures on way

Santiago Metropolitan Region Gov. Víctor Barrueto announced this month that starting next April, use of wood stoves will be prohibited pending the completion of studies of the stoves’ effect on air quality. Barrueto added that tougher measures lie ahead, including new, expanded restrictions on cars.

Currently, 20% of cars without catalytic converters are banned from roadways from March 1 to Dec. 31 on a rotating basis determined by the last digit on a vehicle’s license plate. (Though Chile has required catalytic converters on new cars since 1992, 30% of Santiago automobiles still lack them.) This figure is ratcheted up to 40% during alerts and 60% during pre-emergencies and emergencies.

Circulation restrictions also apply to automobiles with catalytic converters during pre-emergency and emergencies. This month, Barrueto hinted that for automobiles, some farther-reaching measures are in store, saying: “There is no choice on whether the rational use of the automobile will come. It will come.”

Despite such pronouncements, Chilean environmentalists question the government’s commitment to improving air quality. Paola Vasconi, environment director of the Santiago-based Terram Foundation, says that until authorities tackle the issue of growth, they will never clean the region’s air. “Santiago must freeze its emissions, reduce its population and levels of economic activity as well as reduce the horizontal expansion of the city and the corresponding longer distances between homes and jobs,” Vasconi says. “It also requires an efficient public transport system and a decline in the use of cars.”

Manuel Baquedano, executive director of the Institute for Political Ecology, one of Chile’s oldest environmental groups, says the Bachelet administration must make up for lost time. “The Lagos government thought expansion of the Metro [Santiago’s subway] would make [air-quality initiatives] unnecessary,” says Baquedano. “Pollution enforcement was eased.”

User-friendly transit pass

Baquedano believes one step in the right direction could come early next year when a citywide, multi-modal public-transportation pass, called a Multivia, is unveiled. The new ticket, aimed at making public transit easier to use, was developed by Transantiago, an agency launched last year to oversee what had been a transportation network marked by little coordination and virtually no integrated planning.

Officials say Transantiago will find many other ways to better Santiago’s air-quality picture. When the agency started up in October of last year, it added 1,181 new, lower-emission buses to Santiago streets and removed 461 older, highly polluting buses from service. By 2010, Transantiago is scheduled to replace some 7,000 buses currently in operation with more than 4,600 of the cleaner models, which meet the European Union’s Euro III emission standards for diesel engines. With US$300 million in planned 2005-10 investments, Santiago also is working to expand the capital’s subway, build dedicated bus lanes, improve bike lanes and plan new roadways with an eye to decreasing traffic congestion.

Still, authorities must do more and do it faster, say experts such as Andrei Tchernitchin, environment-committee president at the Medical Association of Chile, which represents physicians nationwide.

Tchernitchin says studies show that when Santiago air quality is unusually bad, premature deaths—mostly due to heart problems—increase by about 10%. And because of the capital’s air contamination, he asserts, the incidence of cancer among Santiago residents is significantly higher than it would otherwise be.

Despite this, Conama is so short-staffed that it cannot adequately monitor air pollution levels in many parts of Santiago, Tchernitchin adds. Authorities, he says, must make air-quality improvement an environmental and public health priority of the first order.