From Rosa for the Indoor Air Quality course:
This is not about INDOOR air quality but keeps showing up in international news.
Also, the index of focus PM2.5 is the worst and most invasive kind of particles because they can infiltrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream.
Here are some links (all are very short and easy! especially the video) that can be shared with class:
Video on Bloomberg.tv http://bloom.bg/XkY0z7 includes interviews with doctors expats and foreigners who live in Beijing
CBC http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/01/12/beijing-pollution.html indoors is people’s last reservoir for clean air.
Short blurb on Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/beijing-pollution-pm-25-worse-than-airport-smoking-lounge-2013-1
Article on The Economist http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2013/01/beijings-air-pollution << have to cut and paste URL for some reason.
Some environmentalist lobby group may oversimplify the problem and say “it’s easy, they just have to switch from coal to electric or wind power and change to electric cars”.
To me, that sounds like Marie Antoinette saying, “No bread? Let them eat cake!”
– because electricity and wind power are still expensive and also electric cars; furthermore, these are not the most efficient systems and are still pending development. No easy solution. Or is there??
When is IAQ better than OAQ? Relevant article below on IAQ risk factors for women in China:
http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/chinas-indoor-air-raises-cancer-risk-for-women/
-RM
Great article!
Many of these troubles are coupled with culture and tradition on top of inadequate infrastructure, resource, and knowledge.
These points are particularly alarming:
– “hot oil, a staple in traditional Chinese stir-frying and deep-frying, produces carcinogens, and is a key contributor [to indoor air pollution];”
– using coal as the main fuel source for all heating and cooking needs;
– type of stove/cooking set up and heating devices commonly used are polluting;
– large crowds chain-smoke in small spaces (likely with little ventilation) for long periods of time. People smoke virtually everywhere, all the time, with few cases of area restrictions or separation;
– people avoid opening the windows because of outdoor air pollution and outdoor air temperatures being fairly extreme (cold or hot and humid);
Finally, “every 10 μg/m3increase in PM1 is associated with 45 % increased risk of lung cancer.” (from the research paper abstract http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10552-012-0130-8).
Chinese cities tend to stay busy for longer hours with little downtime for pollutants to dissipate; continuously polluting activities are common as factories operate 24 hours a day over 3 shifts; in addition, vehicle traffic, street food vendors (like bbq stands) and restaurants stay busy and crowded late into the night.
The switch to clean energy source is going to be the biggest task for Chinese leaders, given the infrastructural, technology, and mass-education requirements (among other strategies and solutions).
P.S.:
Just a recap of the scale of things: the population to manage is enormous (Beijing 20.2 million vs. New York 8.3 million; Europe has little more than half of the population of China).
Most of this population is very poor and living in extremely high-density environments… There are 2~4x, or even 10x more people burning garbage, smoking, and using coal heat than in the largest cities in North America/Europe… and there we have the scale of the matter.
Follow up to air quality problem in China: international air pollution, mass-marketed canned fresh air and machinery that belong in the junkyard
“Chinese smog arrives in Japan: Airpocalypse’s international tour”
This was a tagline by Erik Crouch of http://shanghaiist.com/2013/02/05/chinese_smog_arrives_in_japan_airpo.php) and was based off of a more serious article: “China’s air pollution is now felt by its neighbors, Korea and Japan.” http://ajw.asahi.com/article/economy/environment/AJ201302010087
The superficial humor masks a deeper, graver and very serious problem.
It goes beyond the mindset of dismay at “that invasive pollution” now “encroaching into our otherwise pristine territories” —which is certainly understandable, recalling that we have local concerns here of even cross-Pacific pollution by nuclear fall-out from the Japanese tragedy (the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster back in March 2011).
What if this air pollution is partly OUR responsibility? Yes that includes us in Japan, in North America, in Europe.
What I want to shed light on is another dimension to the air pollution issue.
Japan is among the first countries to mass-migrate outdated, less desirable industrial processes to developing countries such as China. This helps monetize otherwise obsolete infrastructure (enormously profitable), increases output cheaply without environmental repercussions in their own land, helping to keep the client nation cleaner than the host nation. In other words, China is a major “buyer” or “licensee” of hand-me-down factory processes and machinery: very obsolete, inefficient and highly polluting old machinery from more industrially-advanced nations (having lost technical advantage or have become banned due to developing environmental protection laws) are still very “active” and very “productive” in China.
Furthermore, in recent decades, China has concentrated enormous amounts of the world’s “smoke stack” responsibilities onto itself— usually environmentally hazardous manufacturing and other industrial processes.
The result? In a small country the repercussions may remain unnoticed. But when it is at a scale the size of China, all consequences are now very visible and very alarming.
These trends coupled with China’s already hazardous domestic load make up one of the biggest challenges we face right now.
Whether we know it or not, we are all somewhat responsible for China’s air pollution, just because so many things we use are made there, likely via processes that may have contributed to air pollution (not to mention other types of pollution).
True. China has its own domestic environmental protection issues.
For example, the mass-marketing of “canned fresh air” as a satirical solution to Beijing’s air pollution shows that the Chinese populace is just as ignorant as canned soda-pop drinkers of the West about the high embodied energy an aluminum (or other metal) can has, versus the sugared water, or in this case, flavored air that it contains.
However, it is not just them. It is us too. We who live in the first world nations who are relatively successful at keeping our own soil clean. We who still import, use, enjoy and take for granted “cheap” products that may very well have wreaked havoc upon and poisoned another land, with loads of environmental costs (debts!) that did not get accounted for in the trade, in anyone’s balance sheets.
As we trace China’s air pollution across national boundaries, we must reflect on our own actions.
We simply can no longer avoid our own environmental footprint by just moving more polluting facilities out of our own backyard overseas, then think that another country’s pollution is their own problem, not ours.
We will get it back at some point.