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Air conditioning causes local air pollution because their waste heat at 40-60°C details here forces cars and buses to use more air conditioning.


Each year, around 1,100 people die from diseases linked to air pollution in Hong Kong alone.

Air conditioners above retail stores eject heat into the street, causing vehicle occupants to use more air conditioning. This increases road side pollutants and creates more heat from engines, which in turn causes more air conditioner use.
These motor vehicle emmissions are more harmful than power plant emissions, because they are dirtier and are emitted right in the urban center where people work and live. They are dirtier, because many buses use diesel engines that emit particulate pollution. Also, many vehicles are older using unreliable or non-existent pollution control devices.

The above sources contribute to air pollution (smog) such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, particulates and ground level ozone, which are especially harmful to children and senior citizens and people with respiratory conditions such as emphysema, bronchitis and asthma.

Hospital admissions and respiratory deaths often increase during periods when ground level ozone levels are high details here. In 2003 some 1,582 UK deaths were attributed to ozone details here.

In Hong Kong, roadside air pollution has worsened over recent years. Every year around 1,100 people die in Hong Kong from diseases linked to air pollution, according to research by Hong Kong University. "Air pollutants increase the stickiness of elements in the blood … With increased stickiness, blood cells stick together, they form a clot. If you form a clot, you may obstruct a vessel and if the vessel is in the heart or the head, you get a heart attack or a stroke,” explains Anthony Hedley, Honorary Professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, which has the world's 10th worst air quality in 2009 details here, the pollution is so bad, that the government passed a law forbidding idling of bus engines while waiting for passengers. Tragically, this led to 2 drivers falling ill or being killed by heat stroke in the summer of 2010 (details here).






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