Air Pollution in Hong Kong: the failure of government and judicial review

There is serious public discontent in Hong Kong about the quality of the air and on what the Government is doing about it. It is well known that each year air pollution in Hong Kong causes at least 1,600 deaths, 64, 000 hospital bed days and US$ 2.6 billion dollars in economic loss.' The Government has proposed new Air Quality Objectives (AQOs) which it claims are in compliance with the WHO 2005 standards. However, this is not the case, as they are compromised by a large number of permitted "exceedances" for polluters.