Cebu, Philippines .. Unhealthy Place To Live

[United Army]

Cebu, Philippines is a unhealthy place to live. If you have problems with bronchitis, pneumonia, or have asthma, allergies or other respiratory problems, IMO you mostly likely will have the same medical problems if you live in the Cebu area and maybe in other parts of the Philippines, like Manila . And why do I say this, well first read my post on Air Purifiers. I use to have problems with bronchitis and getting a running nose with yellow or green junk coming out of my nose, now these have all but gone away. And my step daughter had the same problem with congestion and she has improved also. Here is a pic of the 3M filter in my split air con (air conditioner). A before and after pic. This is after just 2 days and I have to change it, I run all my air cons now 24hrs a day, on fan and on high during the day and low fan at night and have to change the 3M filters in some of my air cons every 2-3 days and others 3-5 days. Now if you were to live on a hill away from the main streets and roads, like I use to when I was living in Talamban, then you will have less problems, like I did. But I moved to Talisay City and bought a house and now have to filter my air in the house or I will get sick. As I was in a taxi going home on the SRP to Talisay City the other day I looked around and the Cebu area reminds me of the LA basin, hills on one side and the ocean on the other side and all I could see was dirty air.

[Mr Lee]

I believe your post answers why I got bronchitis during our recent visits, since I am prone to it, and the pollution has gotten much worse since they opened the Naga coal power plant. Your way of dealing with it seems to be the best way and I will be buying some of those filters when we get back to install in our aircons and fans. I do not use an air purifier because the filters are quite expensive to change all the time, but we do run a water cooled fan which I do not put water in, but use it because it has filters, which I can clean weekly. I plan on buying a second one when we get back so we will then have two filters running besides the aircon. We also put in moldings around our doors and sealed up our condo units as much as possible from outside air coming in, except when we open the sliding doors or front door. By sealing up the doors and putting in awning windows instead of jealousy windows, we have created sort of a positive pressure environment, so when we do open doors, it more of less prevents outside air from coming in. This is an example of the fan we run but not the exact one. I bought ours upstairs in Ayala Metro when it was on sale, and it cost us just under p3000 which is expensive for a fan but has moving louvers and the filter, so it does not just push dust and dirty air around but filters it. We have gone through a lot of fans since buying our condo and I feel this type is the best to have.

[Inspector]

Cebu was the worst place I have ever lived regarding pollution and coughing...Minglanilla. It's very close to Manila regarding pollution. I have no idea why anybody would live there full time. There are so many cleaner places to reside in the Philippines, even for city slickers. Hell, even provinces can be bad if they are near a bus route, or have a lot of trikes.BTW, trikes are reported to be the worst offenders. I believe a lot of the respiratory illnesses many get are from the mold and spores.

[Braddo]

I came back in March from Cebu with a cough that I could not get rid of for weeks then it came back last month went and got a chest Xray and found I have pheumonia so antibiotics and 4 weeks later it has finaly gone Funny 4 years ago I had the same thing but did not do much about it thinking it would go in time and it did 2 months later Each time we send our Mum in law to cebu to buy something for the house she will not stay over night as she gets sick if she stays too long and she has just got over the same cough as me but chest xray did not show up any pnuemonia on her chest I will be staying away from Cebu city next trip in December as much as posiable some say the power plant there has alot to do with the pollution using recycled coal or something like that

[United Army]

Yes its the power plant ( coal dust) and......tricycles, and jeepknees (ha ha mis-spell), and no smog regulations, and dusty roads ( I mean all the roads are dusty not just some). It may be cheap here but the air is a killer sometimes... trucks that hall sand or cement (it falls off the trucks and onto the roads as they drive). I think that is it??????

[Mr Lee]

Any new area under construction is dusty but I am pretty sure the main problem is the power plant in Naga and all the other is just icing on the cake.

[tomtaylor]

Cebu is a filthy place, thats for sure. Not bad as Manila

[TexasRangersFan]

I am from west Texas. There we have dust storms several times a year. The dust storms are like sandblasting. It is not uncommon for the storms to take the paint off the cars and buildings. After the storm is gone it usually takes a few days to remove the dust from the house. I have also lived in big cities all over America with lots of air pollution.Yes I realize the Philippines is not America.

We lived in Davao in the Matina area from March 2011 until September of 2011. The air quality there was much better than here in Cebu. I had a bad cough and sinus problems about once a month there lasting about a week each time. This was due to the neighbors burning anything they could find, tires, styrofoam, leaves, branches, paper, plastic, dead animals, wiring, next to our house once a month. I found out that by using tape around the windows it would stop most of the smoke from getting into the house and using the 3M filters on the aircon would help a great deal.

Since moving to Cebu in September of 2011 however I have been sick almost every day. It is coming up on 9 months now. We have moved several times due to the bad air quality. We lived in Minglanilla first. The air there was almost as bad as the beaches. We found that the water there was so polluted that it was dangerous to swim in. We then moved to the north part of Cebu near Bogo only to find out that the coral dust and mold was very very bad there. So we moved here to Yati in Li-Loan. The air quality here is just as bad as it was in Minglanilla. I have been in the hospital 3 times now due to breathing and sinus problems. So far the only medicines that seem to help are anti biotics and lots of them.

We have taped off all the windows in the upstairs of our home here as well as some of the downstairs windows. It has helped some. We also use the 3M aircon filters on our bedroom aircon. The filter lasts only 1 day then it has to be replaced. We are planning to move yet again to another location. Any suggestions on where would be nice.

[MikeB]

We are planning to move yet again to another location. Any suggestions on where would be nice.

I also had a chronic cough when I first moved to Cebu City. Since you've tried north, why not go south? South of Carcar it's a different world but there's a tradeoff of lack of shopping. Best thing I've done so far was get out of Cebu City.

[sonjack2847]

I still live in Cebu city and I get the problems other people talk about, bad chest,colds etc.

I plan on moving south past Carcar. I have sort of settled on Dalaguete but there many places past Carcar which are very nice and the air is cleaner. But as mike says it is a trade off, shopping ,hospitals and other amenities are nothing like the City. On a plus side I found these places to be much cleaner,less crime and not so many beggars or bloody viagra sellers.