Day to day smog in Beijing
jùn mǎ 俊 马 (Francois de la Chevalerie) with Abraham Goldenberg and the pictures of Sà bīn (萨宾)
Extract of a more complete case study available upon request
Here’s some facts about the worsening suffocating air and traffic pollution quality in China describing and how it is affecting deeply the lives of the Chinese citizens.
EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDIES
Even if the subject of the pollution in China is widely discussed, there have been few epidemiological studies to validate such claims, but the scale of such reports highlights the growing fear of pollution.
The Chinese government has monitored exposure levels in many cities but has kept the data secret. For all of the damage done in 2010 from pollution, 2013 could be worse. The Chinese government, which for years was reluctant to release pollution data, now suggest that particulate pollution this year has been 30 percent higher than the same period in 2012.
According to international pollution norms, we must considered those figures (subject to confirmation) :
Levels of suspended particles: (micrograms per cubic meter): Beijing (370); Shanghai (246); Chongqing (322); Taiyuan (568); Bangkok (200); Los Angeles (76); New York (59); Tokyo (55).
Levels of sulfur dioxide (micrograms per cubic meter): Beijing (94); Shanghai (53); Chongqing (338); Taiyuan (424); Bangkok (13); Los Angeles (8); New York (26); Tokyo (22).
Levels of particles of smoke in Asian cities (micrograms per cubic meter): Calcutta (400); Beijing (380); Jakarta (280); Hong Kong (120); Bangkok (100); Manila (95); Tokyo (50); New York (60).
Pollution season time The symptoms worsened in winter, when smog across northern China surged to record levels. Now he needs his sinuses cleared every night with saltwater piped through a machine’s tubes.
Increasing air pollution might be largely blamed as the principal death cause source.
LAW ENFORCEMENT
On 2011, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) announced a 350 billion yuan (US$56 billion) plan to reduce air pollution during the 2011-2015 period.
To be fair to China, some of their pollution-control laws, and for that matter consumer-protection laws, go beyond our own. Enforcement is indeed often an issue.
The laws are there as well as the technology actually installed in many plants in China, but enforcement is sporadic and minimal, and many plants deliberately do not use the equipment they already have because it is cheaper to pay occasional fines and presumably the odd bribe or two. That leaves more for factory managers to skim off.
China’s failure to have a clean environment is partly a lack of political will, not just technology waiting to be invented. It’s a fair bet the Chinese people see the need to fix it, but their governments (especially local ones) are lagging. And polluters won’t clean up unless they’re told to.
DIE FASTER IN CHINA THAN ELSEWHERE
DEATH TOLL ON THE RISE
Air pollution causes premature births, low-birth weight babies, and depresses lungs functioning in otherwise healthy people. Air pollution is also linked with a variety of respiratory aliments. Around some factories the asthma rate is 5 percent. Many people in Beijing and Shanghai get hacking coughs.
China’s air pollution problem — which contributed to 3.7 million deaths in the country in 2012 — has gotten sharply worse in 2013. And the threat isn’t contained to China.
Those people die prematurely each year in China because of air and water pollution, according to a 2012 World Bank report.
According to Chinese government statistics 430,000 (2012) die each year from ambient air pollution, mostly from heart disease and lung cancer. An additional 110,000 die from illnesses related to indoor pollution from poorly ventilated wood and coal stoves and toxic fumes from shoddy construction material.
The air pollution death figure is expected to rise to 550,000 in 2020.
AIR POLLUTION IN CHINESE CITIES
China’s environmental protection ministry published a report in November 2012 that showed that about a third of 113 cities surveyed failed to meet national air standards last year. According to Chinese government sources, only a third of the 340 Chinese cities that are monitored meet China’s own pollution standards.
The Chinese government has calculated that if the air quality in 210 medium and large cities were to be improved from “polluted” to “good” levels 178,000 lives could be saved.
But today things are still as ugly as ever in Beijing.
Beijing experienced 2,589 deaths and a loss of US$328 million in 2012 because of PM2.5 pollution. Beijing’s smog is a noxious cocktail consisting mainly of heavy automobile exhausts, major coal-fired generators outside of the city and smaller ones located inside the city, as well as dust from construction sites. People sometimes joke that you can smell China’s GDP in the air
16 of the world’s 20 cities with the worst air are in China according to Time magazine.
Only 1% of the 560 million cities dwellers breath air considered safe by European Union standards according to NY Times.
AIR POLLUTION IN THE COUNTRYSIDE – THE CHINA KILLING FIELDS
In rural areas, respiratory disease is the number one killer.
Air pollution is particularly bad in the rust belt areas of northeastern China. A study done by the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that the amount of airborne suspended particulates in northern China are almost 20 times what WHO considers a safe level.
Space shuttle astronaut Jay Apt wrote in National Geographic, « many of the great coastal cites of China hide from our cameras under a blanket of smoke from soft-coal fires. » The northeast industrial town of Benxi is so polluted that it once disappeared from satellite photos. Its residents have the highest rate of lung disease in China.
Chinese farmers are almost four times more likely to die of liver cancer and twice as likely to die of stomach cancer than the global average, since most of the dirtiest factories are in rural China. This has sparked the birth of “cancer villages” around factories.
DRAMATIC CONSEQUENCES
Fleeing the cities, go west !
A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center before the 2008 Olympics found that 74 percent of the Chinese interviewed said they were concerned about air pollution.
Levels of deadly pollutants up to 40 times the recommended expose limit in Beijing and other cities have struck fear into parents and led them to take steps that are radically altering the nature of urban life for their children.
Parents are confining sons and daughters to their homes, even if it means keeping them away from friends. Schools are canceling outdoor activities and field trips. Parents with means are choosing schools based on air-filtration systems, and some international schools have built gigantic, futuristic-looking domes over sports fields to ensure healthy breathing.
Foreign population exodus
Beijing air pollution drives expatriate exodus.
No figures are available on how many people are planning to leave following three months of the worst air pollution on record in China’s capital.
“I’ve been here for six years and I’ve never seen anxiety levels the way they are now,” said Dr. Richard Saint Cyr, whose patients are half Chinese and half foreigners. “Even for me, I’ve never been as anxious as I am now. It has been extraordinarily bad.”
Some middle-and upper-class Chinese parents and expatriates have already begun leaving China, a trend that executives say could result in a huge loss of talent and experience. Foreign parents are also turning down prestigious jobs or negotiating for hardship pay from their employers, citing the pollution.
This year, 15 % of the German have left Beijing for this reason, 12 % of the French.
Political issue
Few developments have eroded trust in the Communist Party as quickly as the realization that the leaders have failed to rein in threats to children’s health and safety. There was national outrage in 2008 after more than 5,000 children were killed when their schools collapsed in an earthquake, and hundreds of thousands were sickened and six infants died in a tainted formula scandal.
THE SO CALLED KILLING PARTICLES
Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region suffered over 100 hazy days a year with PM2.5 concentration two to four times above World Health Organization guidelines.
Particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter are called « fine » particles. The most pernicious measure of urban air pollution — particulates 2.5 microns in diameter or less, or PM 2.5— are among the most hazardous because they easily can lodge deply lungs and enter the bloodstream.
Caused by dust or emissions from vehicles, coal combustion, factories and construction sites, the particles increases the risk of cardiovascular ailments, respiratory disease and lung cancer if people are chronically exposed to them. Sources of fine particles include all types of combustion, including power plants, motor vehicles and residential wood burning.
Dessin de Sabine Cagicos
HOW TO PROTECT YOU ?
Wearing N95 masks will provide effective protection against PM2.5 air pollution but ensure you are wearing the mask correctly with a tight seal around the face. N95 masks can be purchased in pharmacies and can be used multiple times.
Last Comment from John Heinhurd
China is killing the environment and it’s people because of it. What gets me is that this is common sense !!! It’s all about power and money.