Choose your poison

Taking a bus at EDSA (E. de los Santos Avenue) is always a case of choosing your poison.

EDSA air is a lingering brew of poisonous exhaust emissions containing carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, lead and particulate matter from thousands of diesel, gasoline and two-stroke motorcycle engines. There's also the infernal dust that never seems to dissipate.

Taking an open-air EDSA bus guarantees you'll inhale toxic fumes by the lungful. And the longer you stay on the bus, the more death-dealing particulates you absorb.

The Department of Health says motor vehicles account for 80% of the country's total pollution. Of the estimated 4,000 Filipinos who die each year because of air pollution, most can probably be linked to EDSA pollution.

One Filipino doctor, speaking about his air pollution patients, believes it takes just 15 minutes for a person to exhibit symptoms of pollution poisoning (breathing difficulty, headaches, nausea).

And that pollution, being oil, clings to your skin. Wiping your face with a handkerchief, or cleaning your nostrils, will show you how black and disgusting EDSA's deadly air is.

One hour in an open-air bus, therefore, is practically a death sentence. Holding a handkerchief to your nose won't save you from the permeating pollution. Not even a 3M dust mask will.

You'll probably need a portable oxygen tank with a full-face mask for real protection.

I salute all those MMDA (Metro Manila Development Authority) traffic enforcers who spend hours at EDSA pollution hot spots such as Cubao disciplining bus drivers. Those heroic enforcers do their thankless jobs without any form of effective protection against toxic exhaust emissions.

Most wrap handkerchiefs over their noses while some use those colorful but useless motorcycle dust masks in a vain effort to repel toxic pollutants. These brave men are slowly dying while doing their duty.

EDSA's notoriously toxic air will remain poisonous so long as the "geniuses" in government believe sporadic--and next to useless--anti-smoke belching drives are the solution to Metro Manila's worsening vehicle pollution problem. And whatever happened to the much hyped Smoke-Free EDSA campaign of 2003?

"Air conditioned" buses aren't much safer. A lot smell terrible. Some might even be poisonous.

The stink inside some of these buses is so nauseating it's choking. The putrid odor from fungus and bacteria in the aircon system combined with the stench from dirty seats, filthy floors, rotting garbage, spit and vomit create a disgusting, musty stench that has forced me to abandon buses shortly after I boarded.

Sometimes, the aircon is turned on so high you can see the chlorofluorocarbon coolant (mainly freon) spew out of the vents. The coolant smells "toxic" and probably is toxic in badly maintained aircon systems.

Many aircon buses at EDSA are second hand vehicles imported from South Korea and Japan. After a time, some of these jalopies get so beat up you wonder why they're still on the road.

Aircon bus owners often grouse about the unfair competition from the MRT (Metro Rail Transit) and its fast, air-conditioned trains. Why don't these people turn their buses into clean, comfortable air-conditioned havens to draw more riders away from the MRT?

I'd ride a sanitary aircon bus with clean, breathable air. I'm sure a lot of short distance riders will, too.

Right now, however, it's "Lose-Lose" for us commuters when it comes to EDSA buses.

It's criminal to have commuters suffer the agony of plying EDSA aboard open-air buses that ram carcinogenic pollution down their throats, or in "aircon" buses that trigger allergies, asthma attacks, vertigo and vomiting.

Choose your poison and pray. I do, most everyday.