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When NJ met LA; Jiangsu Pollutants “infect” Western US’ air quality

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Chinese factories are responsible for a rise in air pollution in the western United States, reports a paper published on 20th January by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Journal. As China’s leading producer of steel, thermal power and cement; industries that require heavy coal use, Jiangsu province is a major contributor to smog levels.

That our home province is one of the most seriously affected regions by pollution in China is old news. 13 cities in the eastern China area saw heavy pollution throughout December, with vision being reduced to less than 50 metres in Nanjing near the beginning of the month due to the thick haze.

The current situation is the result of a drastic increase in unhealthy weather conditions in and around Nanjing. Reuters is attributing the current deterioration to the powers that be in Beijing, who in an attempt to ameliorate the capital’s environment have moved Chinese steel production from Hebei province down to our very own Jiangsu. The province’s total steel output rose to 11.4 percent of the nation’s total in November, while Hebei’s factories have been shutting down.

Even the most optimistic Nanjinger’s could not deny the intolerable situation in the first week of December, and while there was a slight reprieve throughout the last weeks of the year, this past weekend witnessed schizophrenic weather conditions as air quality went from “good” to “highly polluted” within the space of two days.

While it is obvious that a murky grey sky does not provide for a healthy living environment, so far scientists have struggled to put exact numbers on the effects of pollution on Chinese citizens’ lives. A study recently published in the British Medical Journal has been looking at the future effects of pollution on people’s life expectancy, coming to the conclusion that it will reduce a person’s life by up to 16 years.

The study gathered mortality rates in eight Beijing districts between 2004 and 2008, while simultaneously monitoring Beijing’s air quality to discern the chemical content of more versus less polluted air. A gain in certain toxins, the study revealed, increases the YLL (Years of Life Lost) up to 16.2. The study further determined that young people and women were most affected, while men and the over-65’s suffered less. The explanation given by the study is that young children are prone to developing severe health conditions due to their surroundings.

While these depressing results may hardy come as a surprise, it seems the Western world takes a certain morbid enjoyment out of the fact that air quality in China is for the most part below par. This fascination with China’s “airpocalypse” even goes so far that reputable media outlets have been caught out in a small misinformation scandal. When the UK’s Daily Mail claimed that the pollution in Beijing was now so bad the government had decided to cheer everyone up with projections of beautiful sunrises on Tian’anmen Square, what they were in fact referring to was a looped tourism advertisement for Shandong province screened in the north east of China; the slide of the sun lasted for approximately 10 seconds per loop. Even the most respectable media such as Time, CBS and the Huffington Post ran the story without fact-checking. One cannot help but wonder what it is about this type of story portraying China as virtually uninhabitable that resonates so with Western audiences. One can speculate that it is giving people a sense of satisfaction that great economic success can only come at the price of quality of life.

What the international sphere is now starting to realize however, is that pollution does not stop at the Chinese border. Some nations lie directly in the path of winds that pass through China and carry with them a proportion of toxins. Hence, an environmental engineer in Japan is arguing that trees that have died on Yakushima Island were in fact killed by pollutants stemming from China.

The recent US studies point out the irony that a large amount of the pollution carried from China to the western parts of the US are caused by the production of goods to be exported to American markets. In a Catch 22 due to the outsourcing of the production from the US to the Middle Kingdom, the eastern part of the country is faring a lot better with the closure of polluting production sites.

A news release by the University of California, where one of the studies’ co-authors works, states that “Los Angeles experiences at least one extra day a year of smog that exceeds Federal ozone limits because of nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide emitted by Chinese factories making goods for export.” The pollutant posing the most serious problem is black carbon since it is resistant to rain and can therefore travel across long distances; the substance is linked to afflictions such as asthma, cancer, emphysema, and heart and lung disease.

Helping to put all the hype into a context is consideration of the amount of pollutants originating from China as a proportion of the overall pollution created by the USA itself; minuscule would likely be an over exaggeration.

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