The report released by Berkeley Earth on Thursday said that for 38 percent of the Chinese population, the average air they breathe is “unhealthy” by U.S. standards. The unprecedented and detailed study is based on ground-level measurements.
In China, an estimated 1.6 million people die every year from heart, lung, and stroke problems related to air pollution. The researchers found the highest concentrations of polluted air are found around Beijing, Shijiazhuang and Tangshan in northeastern China. Lead author Robert Rohde said, “It’s a very big number. It’s a little hard to wrap your mind around the numbers. Some of the worst in China is to the southwest of Beijing.”
Interestingly, the research found that air pollution in Beijing originated from other industrial areas outside the capital, particularly Shijiazhuang, 200 miles to the southwest of the city. This information could have implications for improving air quality in time for China’s 2022 Winter Olympics.
“Air pollution is the greatest environmental disaster in the world today,” Berkeley Earth Scientific Director and study co-author Richard Muller said in a news release. “When I was last in Beijing, pollution was at the hazardous level; every hour of exposure reduced my life expectancy by 20 minutes. It’s as if every man, women, and child smoked 1.5 cigarettes each hour.”
Elizabeth Muller, Executive Director of Berkeley Earth, says it is troubling that the health effects are not being taken more seriously by major environmental organizations in Europe and the U.S. Muller suggests a greater use of “scrubbers,” better energy efficiency and changing from coal to natural gas, nuclear power, and renewables as being some of the answers to reducing air pollution.
“Many of the same solutions that mitigate air pollution will simultaneously reduce China’s contribution to global warming. We can save lives today and tomorrow,” Muller concluded.
Air pollution rides the winds, straight to the west coast of North America
In the last few years, the U.S. has been able to cut air pollution levels, sometimes to a significant level. Another study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, showed ozone levels in the troposphere, the lowest level of the atmosphere, actually rose seven percent over China from 2005 to 2010.
The study found that China’s pollution has offset by 43 percent the efforts at reducing pollution on the U.S. west coast. “In a manner of speaking, China is exporting its air pollution to the West Coast of America,” lead researcher Willem Verstraeten of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute said in a statement.
Of course, we all know that ozone pollution can cause a whole mess of respiratory problems, especially in the elderly and children. Data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2010 puts the number of deaths related to air pollution in the U.S. at 63,000 and 88,000 yearly, according to the Guardian. And a 2014 report by the World Health Organization (WHO) puts the number of deaths worldwide related to air pollution at 7.0 million annually.
According to Weather.com, it has even been suggested by some researchers that China’s pollution may begin affecting weather here in the United States. Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology (CIT) in February this year published research that showed that during our cold-weather season in the U.S., China’s pollution is altering weather patterns in this country and other parts of the Northern Hemisphere.
Jonathan H. Jiang, a JPL research scientist, explained in an email to weather.com what this means. “During the wintertime, human-induced pollution such as coal burning in many Asian cities can create smog that lasts for weeks. Under favorable wind conditions, pollution particles can be transported downwind across the North Pacific, where winter storms are prevalent.”
In other words, according to Chris Dolce, a digital meteorologist with weather.com. “Once these pollutants enter the atmosphere in Asia, they can follow the jet stream, which waves its way from west to east through the Northern Hemisphere.”
