In a recent meeting with the local press, BOYSEN^® and the city government of Makati forged a unity for a One Wall One World advocacy. Makati City declares its commitment to be the first smog-free city in the country and this coincides with BOYSEN^®'s own commitment for a cleaner air. To celebrate, the latter initiated the painting of a wall using the latest paint innovation - BOYSEN^® KNOxOUT™. The wall stretches to 240 meters long and situated along the busy street of J.P. Rizal in Guadalupe. With almost 800,000 cars passing through the city everyday, the breakthrough paint technology has proven to take away eight cars' worth of emissions per square meter painted.

According to Eric Cuisia, BOYSEN^®'s senior executive for New Product Innovation, the partnership with Makati started after a meeting with Danny Villas, head of department of Environment and Sanitation. He says that Villas have statistics that show places in Makati are under heavy pollution. Its residences are suffering from various respiratory problems but they do not have a system yet to address it. What they have is the Green Walls project that sought to repaint the walls along some of Makati’s busiest streets. “What was initially a city beautification project evolved into a major movement to fight air pollution.”

A Timely Advocacy
According to Dr. Encarnita Limpin, vice president of Philippine College of Chest Physicians (PCP), the advocacy campaign is timely since this year marks the first international respiratory forum. According to her, the continuous rise of respiratory diseases in the country leads to the celebration of the Year of the Lung this 2010. “[This is the] first time to focus the advocacy campaign to prevent respiratory problems and to curb the rising respiratory diseases,” she says.

According to Dr. Limpin, three respiratory problems remain to be top killers in the country – pneumonia is the fourth cause of mortality, sixth is Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) while seventh is tuberculosis. But aside from causing deaths, respiratory problems also affects productivity and family relationship.

She explains at length that the country’s air pollution problem is more than the World Health Organization (WHO) standard. “It is now the reason why we are facing global problem. The natural disasters are a global problem and it causes a domino effect. Our temperature are becoming warmer and warmer and that is a product of air pollution so it is not just respiratory effects that we should highlight but also the effect of the temperature as well.”

Currently, PCP collaborates with Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities (CAI-Asia) to come up with a study on the (health) effects of air pollution in other major cities in the country. She shares that there is a need to really know the extent of the effects of air pollution to health. She stresses that the air pollution epidemic in the country is not getting any better instead it is getting worst.

To find out more about how you can be one of the citizens or companies who are stepping up to clean our air, plesae visit www.onewalloneworld.com.
- Heizel L. Mainar, Courtesy of Manila Bulletin