Abstract
Incense burning is an important topic facing many countries in Asia. As a highly urbanized area, the overlapping of urban functional blocks in Hong Kong has resulted in many temples being located near residential and commercial areas. Therefore, the pollutants emitted by temples’ incense burning could cause severe health problems to the population. This study identified 366 Hong Kong temples and classified them into four categories: open, semi-closed, closed, and non-active, according to their incense burning characteristics. Among them, open temples have the largest average area and least quantity. Principal component analysis (PCA) indicated that building density, greenery density, water density, and temple weight are the most highly influencing factors. The temple weight is the only loading factor with a contributing factor from PC2, especially in 2006 and 2011. Furthermore, the linear regression model has been applied to analyze the correlation between variables. Although this study did not reach conclusive results about the actual impact of each temple type, the model results confirm that the temple is a sub-factor to respiratory mortality. This provides the theoretical foundation for government policy establishment of temple construction planning and community optimization in Asian cities.
Highlights
Traditional practice for millions of people who believe in Buddhism or Taoism includes incense burning
To understand the association of air pollutants emitted from temples and human health, this study aims to explore the association between temple types and respiratory mortality in the increasingly vertical development of Hong
This paper aims to provide an overview of the association between different types of temples’ incense burning and respiratory mortality, explore its influence on human health, and analyze the main influencing factors in combination with the surrounding environment and background pollution
Summary
Traditional practice for millions of people who believe in Buddhism or Taoism includes incense burning. Their worship place is in a temple where people regularly celebrate their patron deities’ birthdays, and they visit temples impetrating the deities’ blessing when facing difficulties or seeking divine guidance [1,2]. This phenomenon is quite common, especially in East and South-East Asia. Temples are the most concentrated sites of incense burning. Hong Kong has more than 300 registered Chinese temples. Over 70% of them are situated in urban areas with a close proximity to residential and commercial areas and are suffering from severe air pollution
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