Bogota, Colombia

Introduction

My name is Gonzalo Ernesto Díaz Murillo, experienced, honest and independent physician dedicated to Ultrasound Diagnosis, my specialty, with patients from all around the globe, but also studying air pollution in Bogota, Colombia since 1992 (22 years by 2017).

Being a physician for decades gave me sound scientific bases to do it. Besides, I have practiced sports like skydiving, scuba diving and car racing, all certified, that gave me extra knowledge about meteorology, aerodynamics, mechanics, fluids dynamics, gases behavior, air quality, etc.

At first, I had no devices to monitor pollution but I could feel its effects. So, I started getting help from people around the city. They reported symptoms, location, time and date. Wow! A network by phone! Then the Internet came into existence here by late 1995. College students and internet fans all around the world became noticeable. I got free accounts, so did my friends, and soon I was getting reports from pollution symptoms from all around Bogota.

Wintalk became available and immediately got friends all around the globe. Telemedicine started  spreading. My first telemedicine consultation was a friend in Finland, she got abdominal pain, I remember.

So, it became very easy to learn about pollution symptoms and location of pollutants in Bogota. A new air pollution monitoring network was borne, fed by informants! This was critical to dismiss the official international policies about air pollution, as explained in my conference at the Universidad Libre in Bogota.

I am a honest physician, so my concern is saving lives. What does it mean in pollution terms? Real time exposure is what we must aim to! Forget expensive gravimetric air sampling! Go for particles count, gases detection, etc. And common sense!

My concepts are unbiased, am considered a pollution authority and am a lecturer for universities, even for the government, and consulted by mass media about pollution.

Bogotá

Bogotá is one of the most polluted and corrupted cities in the world. Its published AQI data are manipulated by local authorities, who provide false results. We are denouncing official pollution data are false, since 2016. Scientific studies reported that official pollution values were lower than real.

We took many snapshots from official information before August 2016 and denounced what it was going on.

It took 3 weeks for authorities to react and manipulate the information as seen in the pictures below, taken after September 2017.

Any who lives in Bogota, knows this report is false

They turn off official reports when they know pollution will increase extremely, mainly Fridays and weekends

Bogota, by December 2017 has 9.000.000 people living and working in +1540 km². Corruption made Bogota lack metro, trolley cars and electric busses.

The WHO stated Diesel fumes are carcinogenic in Jan 2012. Carcinogenic diesel rules public transportation with more than 20000 diesel buses by 2017. 6000 more carcinogenic buses will arrive in Bogota by December 2018. The system Transmilenio is a complete chaos poisoning the city and creating big traffic jams, as seen in this video.

Transmilenio, big source of carcinogenic diesel pollutants which also warms the Earth. A scientific study showed that people inside those buses are 6 times more exposed to pollutants than pedestrians.

Bogota is a highly industrialized city with many industries on its South side and winds coming from South. Industries are not controlled and they pollute as much as they want.

This picture, taken by the NASA en February 2016, shows the location of the most polluting industries in Bogotá, concentrated on the South side of the city. The darker the brown color, the more industries, which is the South side of Bogota. Seventh Avenue, the Urban Canyon and most polluted street in America, is represented by a light brown almost straight line on the right close to the mountains in dark blue color. Yellow color is also pollution, mainly gases and nanoparticles, as explained in the conference in the video.

Bogota is about 2600 meters above sea level. Bogota winds vary from 0 Knots up to 5 Knots, but speeds above 2.5 knots are not frequent. Its temperature varies usually from 44°F to 66°F, but can be lower or higher.

Bogota has a big urban canyon (canyon street): the 7 avenue or Carrera Séptima in Spanish where one of the most important health centers in Latin America: the Fundación Santa Fé, is located. Many people live around that canyon street as it is a residential area. This Avenue has mountains on East side and buildings on its West creating the canyon.

As corruption rules the city, there are no environmental control and industries and public transportation are completely free to pollute.

Besides, Colombia has strong media censorship and the severity of the pollution problem is restricted for the mass communication media. Thanks to the social networks people can know the real problem, risks and health implications.

So, while the World is warming and people dying because of pollution, authorities bring literally thousands of carcinogenic buses.

All these help me learn a lot about pollution up to a point where I can demonstrate that actual politics, rules and standards are completely useless. You can verify it in my page in Spanish about pollution and in my last two conferences, one for the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota and mainly my conference for the  Universidad Libre in Bogotá.

Briefly: Bogota is victim of corruption making it hardly polluted with carcinogenic diesel and carcinogenic and very toxic industrial fumes, all aggravated with information censorship, which probably will end up in a catastrophe.

Transmilenio
Diesel BRTs

Transmilenio, created by Enrique Peñalosa, 2 times Mayor of Bogota, is the mass transportation system for this 9 million people metropolis, one of the most congested and polluted cities in the world.

See the video

Video Transmilenio

This system is based on high tech metros with a few modifications:

The metro was split into several pieces, steel wheels replaced with tires, electric motors with diesel ones, railways paved, and put that all on the surface.

Results:

Bendy buses splitting in half during journey, catching fire and getting off the road, causing injuries and fatalities.

Many trees were cut down to free space for the buses creating traffic jams and incredible pollution, besides warming.

People are getting cancer and COPD

Now, Peñalosa decided to take transmilenio to the Seventh Avenue, narrow urban canyon carrying hazardous industrial pollution from the south of the city, down north.

This avenue is surrounded by residential areas, 5 star hotels, clubs, universities, hospitals mainly the The Fundación Santa Fe.

The Santa Fe, getting patients from all around the world, and where University of the Andes Medicine students practice, is located in the most polluted place on the 7th Avenue with Particle Matter equivalent to smoke 22.5 cigarettes a day, for children, patients, doctors, students, nurses, pregnant women, etc.

Transmilenio must be removed shortly after installed. Cost will be huge and lost lives cannot be replaced.

Let’s learn from Bogotá
 

The problem is not just Bogota. The problem is many cities as Bogota, are destroying the whole World, because they work like big candles in hermetically sealed space: The Earth, consuming their selves and their resources, while heating the whole world, depleting the Oxygen and poisoning Air, Water and Soil, taken us to a point of no return.

More coming up soon …

Gonzalo Ernesto Díaz Murillo
@PolucionBogota

• A lot more info in Spanish

• Diesel is carcinogenic. IARC - WHO

• Conference Universidad Libre in Bogotá

• Official Air Quality Index in Bogota