Here’s to a healthier 2013!
Anonym
As we are now into the second week of January, let me be one of the last people to wish you a very happy and healthy 2013.
Being New Year, it is of course time, yet again, for me to make a New Year’s resolution focusing as usual on a leaner and healthier me. As always there is a great deal of media and retail encouragement designed to help me with my New Year’s resolution, with promotions on ingredients for healthier meals, incentives to renew my gym membership, and so on.
However, I must confess that rather than getting overly excited about the prospect of ’a new me’ in 2013, I feel more enthusiasm for a video that I watched on the BBC announcing that China is planning to invest $56bn to tackle air pollution. This was great to hear at the beginning of this year, as air pollution is becoming one of the biggest health threats facing China. Cases of lung cancer and cardiovascular illness, already on the rise, could become far more frequent if smog in the cities caused by factory emissions, vehicle exhausts, etc are not monitored and dealt with.
This investment will lead to more data, including imagery, being needed, consumed, and analyzed in order to make better and more informed decisions to help China tackle the pollution problem resulting from its expanding economy. The good thing is that the infrastructure for data, imagery, and the analytical processing capability already exists and is available for use. Hopefully with the announcement of China’s investment in this program, we are a step closer to a cleaner environment, something which can only have a positive impact on people's health.