China's Pollution problem

[GeneChing]

I was tempted to post this as an independent thread when the issue first surfaced in world news, but it'll sit well here. There's a relevant post in the Shaolin forum (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49520&page=6) already.


OPINION ASIA February 5, 2013, 11:20 a.m. ET
How Beijing Hid the Smog (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324445904578285560136861562.html?m od=googlenews_wsj)
China can reverse its air pollution nightmare by committing to real transparency and enforcement.
By STEVEN Q. ANDREWS

Last month Beijing's air quality horror show reached a nightmarish crescendo. January 2013 recorded by far the highest levels of pollution in recent years. Judging by the statistics, the smog that engulfed China's capital was as inevitable as it was apocalyptic. Though government only began reporting concentrations of harmful fine particulate pollution earlier this year, concentrations of a key precursor, nitrogen dioxide, have been significantly higher than 2008 levels for each of the past four years.

China can reverse this downward spiral, but only by committing to the kind of real transparency and enforcement that have historically been in short supply.

When Beijing began reporting air quality data 15 years ago, officials congratulated themselves for their transparency, then turned around and tried to paint a rosy picture. In order to promote progress in combating pollution and put pressure on government officials, days that met China's air quality standards were called blue sky days. Amazingly, every single year the reported annual tally of blue sky days increased—even as pollution levels further deteriorated.

Though the Chinese government has continued to report raw data, it ended the blue-sky campaign in early 2012 because of growing public skepticism about official blue sky counts. That skepticism was fueled by hourly updates from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing's Twitter feed. Since August 2008, the embassy has tweeted independently measured pollution concentrations and described them according to a health index developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The effort revealed that China's blue sky days often had hazardous levels of pollution. Using Embassy data, Chinese programmers developed mobile apps that have been downloaded more than one million times. One app, rather than telling people whether it was a blue sky day, used a more effective metric: whether a pollution mask should be used when venturing out in the smog.

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/AG-AD398A_andre_G_20130205103154.jpg
Getty Images
A tourist walks through severe pollution in Tiananmen Square, Jan. 31.

For most of the last month, a mask has been recommended. The monthly average fine particulate concentration in January 2013 was 200 micrograms per cubic meter. To be considered good in the U.S, air must have a daily fine particulate concentration of no more than 12 micrograms.

Last month, nine days in Bejing had hazardous fine particulate concentration more than 300 micrograms and Jan. 13 reached an apocalyptic 630 micrograms. Even Beijing's annual average of more than 90 micrograms in recent years has been far higher than the worst day at the worst monitoring station in the smoggy U.S. city of Los Angeles (60 micrograms).

If Beijing wants to get serious about tackling pollution, it won't be enough to come clean on air quality data. The government also needs to toughen the health standards by which that data is judged. Although China's descriptions of pollution were recently revised, pollution levels that are six times higher than the U.S. standard are still classified as good air quality. Even the highest daily fine particulate concentration recorded last year in Los Angeles would be considered good in China.

Enforcement poses another challenge. There's no doubt that the Chinese government can deliver genuine blue skies for important events. Despite world-wide concern, the Olympics had reasonable air quality. During both the 60th anniversary of the Communist party in October 2009, and the once-a-decade Communist Party transition in November 2012, air quality was again relatively good.

But while Beijing can require emissions control measures and create temporary good air quality when there is a political imperative, regular environmental enforcement is largely non-existent. The U.S., in contrast, has had relatively strong and consistent enforcement.

In 2008, the EPA under President George W. Bush, sometimes criticized for weak enforcement, collected a civil penalty of more than $5 million from Exxon Mobil for failing to monitor and report emissions at a single refinery in Texas. Last year, under the Obama administration, there were 10 civil penalties of more than $1 million for various violations of the U.S. Clean Air Act. Required pollution control investments under the penalty agreements totaled approximately $1 billion.

In China, the maximum statutory fine for refusing to report emissions data is only 50,000 yuan ($7,653) and penalties for exceeding emission standards can only reach twice that at 100,000 yuan. Although transparency on fines is lacking, state-run media reported in 2011 that the Ministry of Environmental Protection fined 11 power plants for disabling monitoring equipment, manipulating data and exceeding standards.

The violators included China Power Investment, China Guodian, China Huadian and China Datang. China Datang, a Global 500 company which owns three of the offending plants, is a state-owned enterprise. The total fine for each facility was never more than 150,000 yuan.

Even in the absence of much transparency on enforcement, it's easy to understand why factories cheat. It costs less to pay penalties for exceeding emissions limits than it does to use the emissions control equipment that plants have already been required to install.

China is in the process of revising its Air Pollution Control Law. Beijing also recently released its own new air pollution regulations for public comment. If penalties for violations are increased, there is hope that meaningful enforcement and lasting air quality improvements will finally begin. But for now, unless you are visiting Beijing for a major event, be sure to pack a pollution mask.

Mr. Andrews is an environmental and legal consultant based in Beijing.

[GeneChing]

Algae is life. They don't need to 'restore life' here. They need to stop dumping synthetic chemical fertilizers there. :rolleyes:

A Lost Renoir? River in China Looks Like an Oil Painting (http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/03/14/a-lost-renoir/)
2 days ago by John Stuart Translations

http://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/china-lake.jpg?w=580&h=384

With its saturated colors, a picture of a lake in China’s Anhui Province looks like a painting that could have been done by the French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. No Photoshop trickery here though, the above image is an actual photograph of the lake. But how did it get this way?

http://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/slime.jpg?w=580&h=386

Though it looks like green paint, the slime-like substance scooped off the lake’s surface in the above photo is in fact algae, which, due to the effects of synthetic chemical fertilizers, has bred in large numbers. Though continued economic growth has brought prosperity to some parts of the country, accompanying environmental pollution problems such as urban air quality and the state of lakes like this one are once again attracting attention.

http://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/lake-cleaning.jpg?w=580&h=385

The Chinese government has reportedly spent 7.4 billion yen (about 77 million US dollars) in an effort to restore life to the lake shown here.

Comments posted on the Internet in reference to the top photo include, “it looks like a piece by Van Gogh,” “it resembles a green tea latte,” and “it’s like a landscape painting.” We in Japan cannot be too smug, however, as our own country experienced a plethora of similar environmental issues during its rapid growth stage in the 60s and 70s. Hopefully those experiences can be leveraged to help improve the situation in China and we can work together in creating and sustaining a better global environment.

[GeneChing]

More fallout from the pigs perhaps?


Are Rotting Pig Corpses to Blame for China’s Electric Pink Drinking Water? (http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/03/19/are-rotting-pig-corpses-to-blame-for-chinas-electric-pink-drinking-water/)
2 days ago by Andrew Miller


http://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/e6b0b4e98193e6b0b4e6b19ae69f93.jpg?w=580&h=445

A little while back, we reported on the air pollution problem over in China. This week, however, a different form of pollution has come to light. On first sight, you’d be forgiven for mistaking this for a prop from a mutant zombie movie. However what can be seen in the picture above is in fact the tap water of a residential area in Jinan, China. In total, over 500 inhabitants of the area have fallen victim to this most recent ‘pink water’ phenomenon.

Obviously drinking the stuff is out of the question and many residents have been forced, as a temporary measure, to secure rations of bottled water. Just how contaminated this water is remains unclear, but even more intriguing is what caused the phenomenon in the first place. And how harmful could it actually be? Could simply giving the stuff a good, long sniff be hazardous to people’s health?

http://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/e6b0b4e98193e6b0b4e6b19ae69f93efbc93.jpg?w=530&h=517

Looking closely at the above pictures, one gets the impression that the liquid pouring out of the kitchen tap is highly poisonous. Not needing to go so far as to analyse the substance to know it’s a clear health hazard, the residents witnessing the problem first-hand are left with no choice but to buy bottled water and wonder what the cause of it could be.

There have been reports in recent weeks of dead pigs being dumped and washed down the Haunpu river in Shanghai, with many of the animals confirmed as being diseased. However any direct correlation between this and the pink water phenomenon in Jinan has been denied. Nevertheless, with frequent instances of air and environmental pollution in some form or another, China’s inner-city residents are beginning to distrust their government more each day.

http://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/e6b0b4e98193e6b0b4e6b19ae69f93efbc92.jpg?w=551&h=522

Even in Japan, incidents of discoloration in the drinking water are occurring on a daily basis somewhere across the country. However, in this instance, discoloration is normally related to rusty pipes and has no connection to the quality of the water supply itself.

Admittedly, one can foresee similar problems arising again in the future if measures to halt pollution aren’t put in place by the Chinese government.

Thoughts from readers around the world regarding China’s pink water issue include:

It’s got to be potassium permanganate.

Pollution from the sewer system.

Holy water.

I’m not sure what it is but just thinking about it terrifies me.

I like the color!

Boiling it would surely make it drinkable. Not a problem.

It shivers me to the bones to think what type of raw chemicals have seeped out this time.

Pig corpses.

We’ll have more on this story as it breaks.

[Sima Rong]

Oh ****, pink drinking water! That is crazy.

I remember a long time ago when I was a student at Shanghai Foreign Languages University there was a creek by the university that smelled awful. It would have been highly poisonous. I think there were several paint factories nearby pumping into the river, since the colour changed almost daily: sometimes blueish, sometimes milk coloured, sometimes milky-green. Anyway, one day there were workman knocking down a brick wall by the creek, and watching from about the sixth floor up with my roommate, we were praying to ourselves that they didn't fall in, since whatever was in the river, I can't imagine putting it anywhere near your skin would be at all healthy, let alone, god forbid, drinking some. Thankfully, they survived without taking an acid dip.

And the river full of dead pigs now too! What's happening?!

It wasn't that long ago too that Beijing had the worst levels of air pollution ever. What will China do about this? It needs to move forward yes, but this isn't.

[bawang]

Oh ****, pink drinking water! That is crazy.

I remember a long time ago when I was a student at Shanghai Foreign Languages University there was a creek by the university that smelled awful. It would have been highly poisonous. I think there were several paint factories nearby pumping into the river, since the colour changed almost daily: sometimes blueish, sometimes milk coloured, sometimes milky-green. Anyway, one day there were workman knocking down a brick wall by the creek, and watching from about the sixth floor up with my roommate, we were praying to ourselves that they didn't fall in, since whatever was in the river, I can't imagine putting it anywhere near your skin would be at all healthy, let alone, god forbid, drinking some. Thankfully, they survived without taking an acid dip.

And the river full of dead pigs now too! What's happening?!

It wasn't that long ago too that Beijing had the worst levels of air pollution ever. What will China do about this? It needs to move forward yes, but this isn't.

i visited shanghai last month and its the cleanest city i seen in china. they seemed to clean up a lot of garbage and pollution.

[Sima Rong]

i visited shanghai last month and its the cleanest city i seen in china. they seemed to clean up a lot of garbage and pollution.

yes, nowadays shanghai has a lot more trees and green spaces, and significantly less pollution than places like Beijing. To be fair, my statement was from a long time ago. But there are less bikes around now than then and more cars. Still, yes, shanghai isn't too bad. Not great, but much better than many other cities in china yes.

[GeneChing]

Air Pollution Accounting for 15 Percent of Deaths in China (http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/04/03/15-of-deaths-in-china-attributed-to-air-pollution/)
7 hours ago by John Stuart Translations

According to the April 2 edition of Chinese daily newspaper the 21st Century Business Herald, in the year 2010 an incredible 1.23 million people lost their lives across China due to air pollution-related illnesses. The number accounts for 15 percent of total deaths recorded in the country for 2010. The information was revealed by a study group at Tsinghua University on March 31.

Experts report pollutants such as those in the form of micro-particulate matter (particles smaller than 2.5 micro meters) enter the blood every time they are inhaled, causing damage to the respiratory system as well as cerebral and heart ailments.

Toward the end of last year through the beginning of this year, a dense haze containing toxic substances covered up to 25 percent of the Chinese mainland, affecting close to half the country’s population, or 600 million people. The number of people who developed air pollution-related diseases was 20-30 percent greater compared to previous years.

“In order to achieve sustainable development, it is necessary to firmly deal with air pollution and the health hazards posed,” stressed Guo Xinbiao, a professor of public health at the Peking University Health Science Center.


Rivers of blood: the dead pigs rotting in China's water supply (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/29/dead-pigs-china-water-supply)
Shanghai's drinking water is under threat after 16,000 diseased pig carcasses are found in tributaries of the Huangpu river
Nicola Davison in Jiaxing
The Guardian, Friday 29 March 2013 12.09 EDT

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/3/29/1364573336953/A-worker-hauls-up-dead-pi-010.jpg
A worker hauls up dead pigs found floating in the Huangpu river flowing into Shanghai. Photograph: AP

Standing on the quay, Mrs Wu jokes that there are more pigs than fish in Jiapingtang river. But she isn't smiling. The 48-year-old fisherwoman, who lives in Xinfeng, a sleepy country village, recalls splashing about in the river as a child on sticky summer days. Today it is inky black, covered in a slick of lime green algae, and it smells like a blocked drain. "Look at the water, who would dare to jump in?" says Wu. At her feet a dead piglet bobs on the river's surface, bouncing against the shore.

This area of Zhejiang province, 60 miles from Shanghai, has become the subject of public and media scrutiny after more than 16,000 dead pigs were found in tributaries of the city's river, the Huangpu, a source of tapwater. As clean-up efforts wind down, mystery surrounds the cause of the pigs' demise and their appearance in the river.

As public concerns about water safety grow, what has emerged is a picture of a rural region marred by catastrophic environmental damage, inherent malpractice and a black market meat trade.

The first pigs were spotted on 7 March and were soon traced to Jiaxing through tags in their ears. Early tests show they carry porcine circovirus, a common disease among hogs not known to be infectious to humans. Shanghai's municipal water department maintains that the water meets the national standard, but hasn't said much more.

Official opacity has only embittered a public who are increasingly vocal about environmental gripes. "A sluggish response, a lack of disclosure of official data and muddled information has done nothing to quell our doubts," says Weibo (a microblog) user diamondyangxiaowu. "In this environmental crisis China's rivers are facing, there's no time to dally."

For Mrs Wu and her community it may be too late. Over the last decade she has witnessed the near collapse of her livelihood as pig farming in this region has prospered. Her house, a one-story breezeblock box, sits next to Jiapingtang river. Ten wooden flat-bottomed boats with makeshift roofs of plastic and tarpaulin are tethered to the quay. It is on these boats that Wu and her fellow villagers head out on to Jiaxing's network of waterways, though these days they are more likely to do clear-up work for local authorities than fish. A fisherman doing cleaning work from 7am-5pm seven days a week can earn up to 10,000 yuan (£1,000) a year, with an extra 150 yuan (£10.50) a day for carcasses.

"A decade ago this village was prosperous and we lived a comfortable life," says Wu. She is dressed in a leopard-print padded jacket and black wellington boots – her work gear. "We paid for our houses by ourselves, sent our children to good schools and supported the elderly. Now things are a mess."

The pig industry blossomed in Jiaxing in the 1980s. Last year China produced and consumed half the world's pork, about 50m tonnes. One village, Zhulin, which is at the centre of the scandal, earned the nickname "to Hong Kong" for its steady supply of meat to the territory. Most families in Zhulin keep pigs; the village's ample fields, which in March are covered in yellow rapeseed flowers, yield hundreds of squat concrete barns holding dozens of squealing hogs.

This upsurge is one explanation for the carcasses, though officials are reluctant to say so. "We have seven dead pig processing plants. Each is 100 cubic metres large and can gather thousands of dead pigs," says Chen Yuanhua, party secretary for Zhulin. According to a 2011 report by Zhejiang province's environmental protection bureau, 7.7m pigs are raised in Jiaxing. With a mortality rate of 2-4%, up to 300,000 carcasses need to be disposed of each year. "We have some difficulties with the growing number of pig farms and a lack of funding and land to build more plants," Chen says. He concedes that some farmers throw dead pigs into the rivers "for convenience".

There could be another, murkier reason behind the pig manifestation. On 23 March, state-run China Central Television (CCTV) exposed how illegally processed pigs have been making their way into markets for years. While farmers are required by law to send animals that die of disease or natural causes to processing pits, black market dealers intercept the chain, butchering the hogs to sell as pork. Last November a Jiaxing court sentenced three such butchers to life in prison. The offenders had processed 77,000 carcasses, making almost 9m yuan (£1m) profit.

Because of the crackdown, black market traders have stopped buying the dead stock and farmers have resorted to dumping. Pan Huimin, a Zhulin resident who is in custody on suspicion of dealing in dead pigs told CCTV there was "a 100%" correlation between his arrest and the dead pigs incident.

News of this illicit meat trade doesn't faze the residents of the Jingxiang fishing commune, a few miles from Zhulin. The trade is considered not ideal, but normal. Inside the common room, bare lightbulbs illuminate a poster of Mao Zedong on the wall, as a group of elderly residents play mahjong in the corner. There used to be 250 fishermen here, but because of the rampant pollution the 60 left mainly clean rivers.

One resident, Mr Li, says his community has been complaining since 2003. "Things changed in the early 2000s when more pig farms turned up and their waste water, manure and carcasses poured into the river," he says. "Though we've been petitioning for years, rather than an improvement the situation has deteriorated. The local government's slow responses always pass the buck."

Such negligence exacerbates the serious water quality issues China faces. Greenpeace East Asia estimates that 320m people in the country are without access to clean drinking water. A 2011 study by the ministry of environmental protection found that of 118 cities, 64 had "seriously contaminated" groundwater supplies.

Yang Hanchun, of the Chinese Association of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, says China has comprehensive laws for the protection of the environment against animal husbandry, but authorities often fail to uphold them.
Protests quashed

Over the weeks since the discovery of 16,000 pig carcasses in Shanghai's water supply, authorities have consistently worked to quell public outcry, reiterating that drinking water is safe. While there have been reports and discussion of the incident in state media and on the country's rollicking microblog network, which is curtailed by censors, attempts to organise protests have been swiftly quashed.

Pan Ting, an outspoken Shanghainese poet, was detained for questioning by police after she posted a call for a mass walk along the Huangpu, the city's central river, on her Sina Weibo account. The post, which went out to her 50,000 followers on 14 March, called for a "pure stroll" without banners or slogans. Soon afterwards she was asked to "drink tea" with the police – an idiom used to describe interrogations. On her other Weibo account she later posted: "I feel very disappointed. You even shut out a voice concerned about local pollution and your own lives. I will see how long you will shut me out. At least uncle tea said to me: I understand where you are coming from."

As news about Pan's detention spread through Weibo, prominent users voiced support. "Just because a young woman said a few honest words about the dead pig issue, she was detained, banned and forced to hand in all of her communication devices," said Li Minsheng, a well-known writer. "She was even 'missing' for three hours! Her only request was: 'Please do not come ring my doorbell early in the morning or in the middle of the night to scare my mum.' As a big city that has hosted the World Expo, why can't Shanghai tolerate a poet? What law has Pan Ting violated? Please respond to the whole nation, Shanghai!"

Additional reporting: Xia Keyu.

I've always thought PRC was post-apocalyptic.

[GeneChing]

China has been undertaking unprecedented ecological restoration efforts to deal with its problems of pollution. It has one of the world's largest recycling programs and reforestation programs and is leading the world with the introduction of a carbon tax. It's just the magnitude of China is so huge, that even these efforts aren't enough. That's why I say it's post-apocalyptic. In many ways, China is facing the same kinds of problems we'll see all around the world given projected population growth.

No independent farmer in the PRC has 16,000 pigs.

[Syn7]

China has been undertaking unprecedented ecological restoration efforts to deal with its problems of pollution. It has one of the world's largest recycling programs and reforestation programs and is leading the world with the introduction of a carbon tax. It's just the magnitude of China is so huge, that even these efforts aren't enough. That's why I say it's post-apocalyptic. In many ways, China is facing the same kinds of problems we'll see all around the world given projected population growth.

No independent farmer in the PRC has 16,000 pigs.

Nice to hear it's true. At least I hope it's true. For everyones sake. We all need to step up here. I'm pretty surer their were a lot of western consultants that helped frame their version of the EPA.


So if it isn't independent, why is it so hard to identify where they come from? Do they not mark their livestock? I wouldn't be surprised to hear an indy farmer not marking their stock, but a big one? I mean, what kind of food safety program do they have over there? It should be illegal to not tag them.

[GeneChing]

Green, then pink, now red. I can't believe this guy compared it to Red Bean Soup. :eek:

Also, please contain additional bacon posts to the bacon thread (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48509). ;)

Red water leads to resignation, public apology (http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-04/08/content_16381492.htm)
Updated: 2013-04-08 01:59
By ZHENG JINRAN in Shijiazhuang (China Daily)

A team of experts has been set up to test drinking water believed to have killed 700 chickens.

The intense publicity surrounding the "red water" has led to the resignation of the head of environmental protection and the company responsible for the pollution issuing a public apology.

"Experts have taken samples from ditches and underground water, including the water pumped from 50 and 100 meters deep," Tian Hongxia, a spokeswoman for Cangxian county, Hebei province, said on Sunday. "They need time to test all the samples."

They have been conducting tests on red water since it was exposed on March 29, yet no results had been released as of Sunday.

Before the results were released, the government suggested residents and livestock not use shallow groundwater.

The water running through ditches or pumped from deep underground in Xiaozhuzhuang village was found to be red and with an unpleasant odor.

At least 700 chickens died after drinking the water since November, according to media reports.

The serious water pollution has attracted much public attention.

Yuan Wenchao, 35, who lives in the neighboring village about 10 km away, said his family has started to check the color of the water before drinking.

"I think without effective measures for control, we will suffer the same fate as the chickens," he said.

Yet the county's former head of environmental protection, Deng Lianjun, denied any risk. "The color does not mean the water is polluted. You know, after boiling with red beans the water has that color, too."

His response to the pollution drew more criticism, forcing him to resign. The county government announced on Friday that they dismissed Deng as Party secretary of the bureau and suggested the Standing Committee of People's Congress remove him as head of the bureau.

The company responsible for discharging pollutants in rivers for a number of years, Hebei Jianxin Chemicals, has issued a public apology. The company's branch in Cangxian was closed after a sulfur trioxide leak in 2011.

The company said the remaining materials caused the pollution, and they will take full responsibility.

"We will remove the remaining manufacturing shop and equipment as soon as possible and follow the professional suggestions on environment modification," the announcement from the company said on Friday, yet no detailed measures have been released.

Liu Xiaoduan, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, said: "Based on the strange color of the drinking water, we can say that the water has been polluted.

"We have the technology and skills to restore the water quality as long as we find the pollutants and ways of pollution," she said, adding that the priority is to keep the source of pollution under control.

Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said the company should take measures to improve the situation, but said the government is lacking in supervision.

"Cangxian is not the only place where rivers were polluted by large chemical or steel companies for years," he said. "They can cause the pollution over a long time without punishment all because they are the major contributor of government revenue."

The most important solution to reduce the chance of pollution is to improve the law and make individuals and groups pay a higher price for pollution, he added.

Pei Pei in Shijiazhuang contributed to this story.

zhengjinran@chinadaily.com.cn

[GeneChing]

Man, I'd love to meet the spin doctor who came up with this beauty. WTH must they have been thinking to run such a claim?


“5 Surprising Benefits of Smog” Jokes CCTV, Chinese Reactions (http://www.chinasmack.com/2013/stories/5-surprising-benefits-of-smog-jokes-cctv-chinese-reactions.html)
by Bing on Wednesday, December 11, 2013

http://img.chinasmack.com/www/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/heavy-air-pollution-brings-five-unexpected-advantages-01.jpg
CCTV news claimed that heavy smog brings five unexpected advantages

Chinese people has been harassed by the frequently occurring heavy smog in China. But on December 8th, a reporter for state-broadcaster CCTV published an article that says the smog has five surprising benefits: The smog makes Chinese people more united, more equal, more clear-headed, more humorous, and more knowledgeable. On December 9th, many media reprinted this article and pasted the link on their own official microblog accounts, sparking both outrage and derision among Chinese netizens.

From Sina Weibo:

@头条新闻: CCTV Media Claims Smog Has Brought “Five Surprising Gains” — The CCTV website published an article claiming, “You may have realized that the smog that you hate bitterly and feel helpless is not all bad, because at the same time it has wrecked havoc on on the Divine Land [a poetic name for China], it has also brought us five major benefits.” Including: Smog has made Chinese people more united; smog has made Chinese people more equal; smog has made Chinese people more clear-headed [aware]; smog has made Chinese people more humorous; smog has made Chinese people more knowledgeable. Details: http://t.cn/8kMzqWb [original article has since been removed]

From Sina Weibo:

@每日经济新闻: CCTV Website： The Five Unexpected Benefits Brought By Smog — First, the smog has made Chinese people more united. The nation’s people have formed an “anti-smog national united front”. Everyone takes turns suffering with no one capable of feeling much superiority over others. Second, in the face of smog, everyone is equal. Third, the smog has made Chinese people more clear-headed, strengthening our awareness of danger/misery. Fourth, the smog has made Chinese people even more humorous. Finally, the smog has made Chinese people learn more knowledge.

http://img.chinasmack.com/www/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/heavy-air-pollution-brings-five-surprising-benefits-02.jpg
http://img.chinasmack.com/www/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/heavy-air-pollution-brings-five-surprising-benefits-02.jpg
http://img.chinasmack.com/www/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/heavy-air-pollution-brings-five-surprising-benefits-02.jpg

[TaichiMantis]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/529999/20131213/china-school-kung-fu-lessons-fight-air.htm


A primary school in China has started teaching children kung fu - as a form of self-defence against air pollution.

Heavily contaminated smog is a huge problem in China, with children regularly kept indoors to protect them.

Many children grow up with asthma and other respiratory illnesses and the pollution was recently blamed for a child being diagnosed with lung cancer. State media said the eight-year-old girl had contracted the disease after being exposed to harmful particles in the air throughout her life.

In a bid to protect children from the air pollution, the Guangming Road Primary School in China's northern Hebei province has designed kung fu aerobics to mitigate the effects of the smog on the body, Xinhua reports.

The school has developed 23 moves, two of which involve pressing an acupoint and breathing deeply into the belly.

Acupoints boost immune system

Wei Huangiang, the deputy dean of the school who designed the kung fu aerobics, said the moves are effective against air pollution: "Pressing the Hegu acupoint, located between the thumb and index finger at the back of the hand, helps promote lungs' detoxification. Breathing into the belly dispels more residue gas left in human organs, reducing the harm caused by smog."

The kung fu moves can be performed in the classroom and the exercises take about two minutes to complete. All the 470 students at the school are required to do the exercises four times per day on smoggy days.

He Linxuan, a fourth-grade student, said: "The smog particles inhaled in our lungs are harmful, and we have to wear mouth cover on our way to school or home. We were taught that the aerobics help us to get rid of the dirty particles."

However, not all are convinced about the health benefits of kung fu aerobics. Some online users said it is unrealistic to think a few simple moves can prevent the health effects of air pollution.

Liu Erjun, a doctor with the traditional Chinese medicine department of the First Affiliated Hospital, said that while pressing certain acupoints during exercise can help to enhance people's immune systems, it is not clear how much help it would be in preventing diseases caused by the smog.

[GeneChing]

...but on another thread: Eating bitter in China (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?65261-Eating-bitter-in-China&p=1258170#post1258170) :cool:

[TaichiMantis]

...but on another thread: Eating bitter in China (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?65261-Eating-bitter-in-China&p=1258170#post1258170) :cool:

*sigh* my fu is weak :o

[GeneChing]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPJtSuL-qaU

[GeneChing]

Because that's the only way to tell the truth on the web. BY DEMOCRACY! ;)


This Photo Went Viral — But You Probably Didn't Get the Full Story Behind It (http://www.policymic.com/articles/79483/this-photo-went-viral-but-you-probably-didn-t-get-the-full-story-behind-it)
By Chris Miles 3 hours ago

The news: If you read TIME, the Huffington Post, CBS News or the Daily Mail this past weekend, you likely saw this viral photo of Chinese citizens being forced to watch virtual broadcasts of the sunrise in Beijing, thanks to sun-clouding, throat-clogging levels of murky industrial fog.

http://media2.policymic.com/622c60dfe4e6ad50d8721e4436f85f4a.jpg
Image Credit: Getty Images via Daily Mail

The Daily Mail ran the story with the photo caption on Friday, which opened with the sentence, "The smog has become so thick in Beijing that the city's natural light-starved masses have begun flocking to huge digital commercial television screens across the city to observe virtual sunrises."

Chilling and creepy.

This photo might have you wondering whether Beijing is just barely beating us to that polluted, dystopian near-future — a real-life sci-fi nightmare of smog and industrial poison slowly choking us all to death.

But the whole story is a fake.

The truth: As TechInAsia reports, the smog is real but the fabled publicly-orchestrated virtual sunrise is not.

The sunrise was part of a 24/7, seven-days-a-week ad for tourism in the Shangdong province that runs continuously no matter how much smog is flowing into Beijing that day. This particular animation is less than 10 seconds of the ad; the photographer in question just took a lucky snapshot.

That didn't stop this:

http://media2.policymic.com/53218f06a2199a41fc909b04773c6753.png
Image Credit: TechInAsia

Whoops! Here is a similar Shangdong tourism video. Unsurprisingly for a campaign titled "Friendly Shangdong," it features many sunrises.

Other elements of the original Daily Mail story didn't seem to make sense. The story claimed, "... as the season's first wave of extremely dangerous smog hit — residents donned air masks and left their homes to watch the only place where the sun would hail over the horizon that morning."

But why would Beijing residents willingly risk severe air pollution just to stare at an LED screen? (And why are most of the few residents pictured not paying any attention to the screen?)

Adding insult to injury, the quote from a Chinese traffic coordinator in the Mail's original story was lifted verbatim from an unrelated Associated Press article, apparently without attribution.

Did you fall for this story? I mean, of course, it must be true, right? Because you read it in the Daily Mail:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI&feature=player_embedded

The bottom line: Pollution in China, especially in major cities bordered by industrial regions, is indeed a horrifying, life-threatening problem for many of the country's 1.3 billion-plus residents. But flocking to giant LED screens just to see the sun? Hardly.

[GeneChing]

Thanks for catching that, btw. :o


China Exports Pollution to U.S., Study Finds (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/world/asia/china-also-exports-pollution-to-western-us-study-finds.html?_r=0)
By EDWARD WONGJAN. 20, 2014

BEIJING — Filthy emissions from China’s export industries are carried across the Pacific Ocean and contribute to air pollution in the Western United States, according to a paper published Monday by a prominent American science journal.

The research is the first to quantify how air pollution in the United States is affected by China’s production of goods for export and by global consumer demand for those goods, the study’s authors say. It was written by nine scholars based in three nations and was published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which last year published a paper by other researchers that found a drop in life spans in northern China because of air pollution.

The latest paper explores the environmental consequences of interconnected economies. The scientists wrote that “outsourcing production to China does not always relieve consumers in the United States — or for that matter many countries in the Northern Hemisphere — from the environmental impacts of air pollution.”

The movement of air pollutants associated with the production of goods in China for the American market has resulted in a decline in air quality in the Western United States, the scientists wrote, though less manufacturing in the United States does mean cleaner air in the American East.

Jintai Lin, the lead author of the paper, said in an interview that he and the other scientists wanted to examine the transborder effects of emissions from export industries to look at how consumption contributes to global air pollution.

“We’re focusing on the trade impact,” said Mr. Lin, a professor in the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at Peking University’s School of Physics. “Trade changes the location of production and thus affects emissions.”

Powerful global winds called westerlies can carry pollutants from China across the Pacific within days, leading to “dangerous spikes in contaminants,” especially during the spring, according to a news release from the University of California, Irvine, where one of the study’s co-authors, Steven J. Davis, is an earth system scientist. “Dust, ozone and carbon can accumulate in valleys and basins in California and other Western states,” the statement said.

Black carbon is a particular problem because rain does not wash it out of the atmosphere, so it persists across long distances, the statement said. Black carbon is linked to asthma, cancer, emphysema, and heart and lung disease.

“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 statement said.

Using a modeling system called GEOS-Chem, the scientists estimated that in 2006, sulfate concentrations in the Western United States increased as much as 2 percent, and ozone and carbon monoxide levels also increased slightly because of the transportation of pollutants from emissions that resulted from the manufacture of goods for export to the United States. Because the Eastern United States has a much denser population, the outsourcing of manufacturing to China still resulted in “an overall beneficial effect for the U.S. public health,” even if Western states suffered, the scientists wrote.

The amount of air pollution in the Western United States resulting from emissions from China is still very small compared with the amount produced by sources in the United States that include traffic and domestic industries.

The study’s scientists also looked at the impact of China’s export industries on its own air quality. They estimated that in 2006, China’s exporting of goods to the United States was responsible for 7.4 percent of production-based Chinese emissions for sulfur dioxide, 5.7 percent for nitrogen oxides, 3.6 percent for black carbon and 4.6 percent for carbon monoxide.

The interdisciplinary research project was begun two and a half years ago by scholars in Britain, China and the United States. The group included economists as well as earth and environmental scientists. The methodology applied various analyses and modeling to the Chinese economy and to the earth’s atmosphere and weather patterns.

The scholars who gave emissions estimates for China’s export industries, a significant part of the country’s economy, looked at data from 42 sectors that are direct or indirect contributors to emissions. They included steel and cement production, power generation and transportation. Coal-burning factories were the biggest sources of pollutants and greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming.

In recent years, scholars have been studying the impact of China’s total emissions on global air pollution and warming. Residents of nations in the path of winds carrying pollutants from China have grown alarmed at what they believe to be deteriorating air quality in their countries because of that pollution. In Japan, for instance, an environmental engineer has attributed a mysterious pestilence that is killing trees on Yakushima Island to pollutants from China.

Alex L. Wang, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies Chinese environmental policy, said after reading the new paper: “This is a reminder to us that a significant percentage of China’s emissions of traditional pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions are connected to the products we buy and use every day in the U.S. We should be concerned, not only because this pollution is harming the citizens of China, but because it’s damaging the air quality in parts of the U.S.”

Mr. Lin, the report’s lead author, said he hoped that the research would stimulate discussion of adopting consumption-based accounting of emissions, rather than just production-based accounting.

Exports accounted for 24.1 percent of China’s entire economic output last year, down sharply from a peak of 35 percent in 2007, before the global financial crisis began to weaken overseas demand even as China’s domestic economy continued to grow. The 2013 number takes into account economic data that was released on Monday.

Economists caution that this does not mean that a quarter of the economy was dedicated to producing goods for exports, since China still does a lot of reprocessing instead of making exports entirely itself.

But the proportion of China’s exports that are made in China has risen steadily in recent years as many companies move more of their supply chains, instead of just having final assembly work done here. So the overall percentages of economic output might not by themselves be fair indicators of the importance of exports to the Chinese economy.

Chinese exports to the United States sagged in 2009 because of the global financial crisis but have resumed vigorous growth. By China’s method of counting, which includes only direct shipments from mainland Chinese ports to the United States and excludes goods that travel by way of Hong Kong, Chinese exports grew to $368.5 billion last year from $252.3 billion in 2008. By contrast, China imported only $152.6 billion worth of goods directly from the United States.

The United States, which does include goods briefly transiting Hong Kong in its trade figures with mainland China, has shown even larger American trade deficits with China for many years, because Chinese companies use Hong Kong heavily for exports but much less for imports.

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

[Syn7]

Argumentum ad numerum is a fallacious argument! :p

[GeneChing]

I don't think those little masks will help all that much. Go to Shanghai. Get a free mask and lung cancer.

Shanghai considers arming residents with anti-pollution masks (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10586296/Shanghai-considers-arming-residents-with-anti-pollution-masks.html)
Proposals to distribute free masks come after the Chinese mega-city suffered periods of severe smog that saw flights diverted, schools closed and citizens ordered to stay indoors
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02709/harbin2_2709592b.jpg
Shanghai’s pollution problem had become “more and more obvious” since 2012 Photo: REUTERS

By Tom Phillips, Shanghai
11:08AM GMT 21 Jan 2014

Shanghai is considering distributing protective masks to its smog-choked residents, according to reports in the local media.

The proposals were made by Zhu Junbo, a local representative of China’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and follow a period of unusually toxic air pollution in the financial hub.

Shanghai’s pollution problem had become “more and more obvious” since 2012, Mr Zhu argued, according to the city's Xinmin Evening News.

"The government could purchase the right kind of masks, or select companies to produce qualified masks for distribution,” he told state media.

“We need to treat the haze at the source. We have noticed that Shanghai’s government and the central government have adopted many methods [to tackle pollution], but it may take time to bring about fundamental change,” added Mr Zhu, who is also the deputy bureau chief of Shanghai’s media regulator, the Press and Publication Administration.

It was not immediately clear if the proposals would see authorities give masks to all of the city’s more than 23 million residents. Mr Zhu said children, traffic police and those who worked outdoors should be given priority. The masks would be distributed through the city’s health care system, the Xinmin Evening News reported.

The report came as Yang Xiong, Shanghai’s mayor, told an annual summit of Communist Party leaders and advisers that his city needed to “break away from the conventional path of development.”

“Environmental capacity is strained and air pollution such as haze has become a pronounced problem,” Mr Yang told Shanghai’s People’s Congress on Sunday.

Mr Yang vowed to “pay more attention to the atmospheric environment” although on Tuesday the Shanghai Daily newspaper said the city’s investment in environmental protection would not rise from its current level of around 3% of economic output.

In 2014, Shanghai aimed to “eliminate 500 heavily polluting installations and facilities,” the mayor said.

Shanghai has traditionally been considered less polluted than the notoriously foul-skied Beijing. But in recent months recurrent bouts of severe smog have put its political leaders under pressure and made facemasks a common sight on the city’s streets.

Last December Shanghai suffered one of the worst spells of air pollution on record. Sports events, lessons and flights were cancelled as a putrid yellow haze enveloped the city and levels of PM2.5, a miniscule airborne particulate that has been linked to hearth disease and cancer, rocketed to levels that were more than 20 times those deemed safe by the World Health Organisation.

Last Wednesday, Shanghai introduced a “special emergency pollution” plan under which the government will be able to force cars off the city’s roads and close schools during particularly bad spells of pollution.

Some reports have suggested Shanghai may be suffering the consequences of a crackdown on polluting steel mills in the industrial belt around Beijing.

Seeking to clear Beijing’s skies, authorities closed 8,347 “heavily polluting companies” in the northern province of Hebei last year, China’s official news agency said last week.

However, analysts believe some dirty industries, including steel, cement and glass, may have simply migrated to provinces surrounding Shanghai, including Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and Jiangxi.

“It could be that they reduce pollution in Hebei and it just pops up again here in Shanghai,” Graeme Train, a Shanghai commodities analyst, told Reuters earlier this month.

Shanghai is not the only Chinese city grappling with how to clear its skies.

On Tuesday, state media quoted senior Communist Party officials in the provinces of Guangxi and Hubei who voiced concerns over increasing levels of smog.

“[Guangxi’s capital] Nanning used to be famous for its clean air but after looking at the city’s air quality readings last year, it’s hard to be optimistic,” Jiang Hongbing, the deputy head of the Communist Party’s provincial supervision department, told Xinhua, China’s official news service. Mr Jiang urged his province’s leaders to “act before things get really serious.”

Li Hong, a senior official from Hubei province, said: “[Locals] feel the problems of Beijing and Shanghai are now happening around us.”

In an interview with the state-run China Daily, Shen Xiaoyue, a senior official from China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, warned: “The situation is too serious to allow further delays."

“After 30 years of fast-track economic development since the 1980s the environmental damage that’s resulted from the GDP-centred policy has become all too apparent,” added Ms Shen, who is director of the ministry’s policy research centre.

“The public is understandably alarmed by the heavy smog which on bad days seems to engulf the country and, judging by all the evidence, if not handled properly and directly, environmental issues have the potential to not only erode government credibility but also to threaten social stability.”

[GoldenBrain]

That's just uuuuuugly! And, yes, those masks are woefully inefficient. They are meant to keep your fluids from being sprayed on other people, but they don't do much in the way of filtering out that air. Below is a link to the mask they should be using. They rank right up there with the best respirators. I'm not a fit seal salesman. I just thought it was a good idea to offer up this info for those who need a really good mask.


http://www.weinproducts.com/fitseal-facemask.htm

[Syn7]

A dust mask can only do so much. They need respirators. And even then, there will still be.... ummm... issues.

[GeneChing]

“It’s always puzzled me that the focus is always on China and not India,” said Dr. Angel Hsu, director of the environmental performance measurement program at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. “China has realized that it can’t hide behind its usual opacity, whereas India gets no pressure to release better data. So there simply isn’t good public data on India like there is for China.”


Beijing’s Bad Air Would Be Step Up for Smoggy Delhi (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/world/asia/beijings-air-would-be-step-up-for-smoggy-delhi.html?hpw&rref=health)
By GARDINER HARRIS JAN. 25, 2014

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/01/26/world/INDIA-2/INDIA-2-master675.jpg
People made a fire in New Delhi to keep warm on Friday, one of many sources of pollution that makes the city’s air among the world’s worst. Sami Siva for The New York Times

NEW DELHI — In mid-January, air pollution in Beijing was so bad that the government issued urgent health warnings and closed four major highways, prompting the panicked buying of air filters and donning of face masks. But in New Delhi, where pea-soup smog created what was by some measurements even more dangerous air, there were few signs of alarm in the country’s boisterous news media, or on its effervescent Twittersphere.

Despite Beijing’s widespread reputation of having some of the most polluted air of any major city in the world, an examination of daily pollution figures collected from both cities suggests that New Delhi’s air is more laden with dangerous small particles of pollution, more often, than Beijing’s. Lately, a very bad air day in Beijing is about an average one in New Delhi.

The United States Embassy in Beijing sent out warnings in mid-January, when a measure of harmful fine particulate matter known as PM2.5 went above 500, in the upper reaches of the measurement scale, for the first time this year. This refers to particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, which is believed to pose the greatest health risk because it penetrates deeply into lungs.

But for the first three weeks of this year, New Delhi’s average daily peak reading of fine particulate matter from Punjabi Bagh, a monitor whose readings are often below those of other city and independent monitors, was 473, more than twice as high as the average of 227 in Beijing. By the time pollution breached 500 in Beijing for the first time on the night of Jan. 15, Delhi had already had eight such days. Indeed, only once in three weeks did New Delhi’s daily peak value of fine particles fall below 300, a level more than 12 times the exposure limit recommended by the World Health Organization.

“It’s always puzzled me that the focus is always on China and not India,” said Dr. Angel Hsu, director of the environmental performance measurement program at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. “China has realized that it can’t hide behind its usual opacity, whereas India gets no pressure to release better data. So there simply isn’t good public data on India like there is for China.”

Experts have long known that India’s air is among the worst in the world. A recent analysis by Yale researchers found that seven of the 10 countries with the worst air pollution exposures are in South Asia. And evidence is mounting that Indians pay a higher price for air pollution than almost anyone. A recent study showed that Indians have the world’s weakest lungs, with far less capacity than Chinese lungs. Researchers are beginning to suspect that India’s unusual mix of polluted air, poor sanitation and contaminated water may make the country among the most dangerous in the world for lungs.

India has the world’s highest death rate because of chronic respiratory diseases, and it has more deaths from asthma than any other nation, according to the World Health Organization. A recent study found that half of all visits to doctors in India are for respiratory problems, according to Sundeep Salvi, director of the Chest Research Foundation in Pune.

Clean Air Asia, an advocacy group, found that another common measure of pollution known as PM10, for particulate matter less than 10 micrometers in diameter, averaged 117 in Beijing in a six-month period in 2011. In New Delhi, the Center for Science and Environment used government data and found that an average measure of PM10 in 2011 was 281, nearly two-and-a-half times higher.

Perhaps most worrisome, Delhi’s peak daily fine particle pollution levels are 44 percent higher this year than they were last year, when they averaged 328 over the first three weeks of the year. Fine particle pollution has been strongly linked with premature death, heart attacks, strokes and heart failure. In October, the World Health Organization declared that it caused lung cancer.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/01/26/world/INDIA-3/INDIA-3-articleLarge.jpg
BREATHLESS Amanat Devi Jain, 4, receives twice-daily breathing treatments for her asthma. Her father said the family breathed normally whenever they left India. Graham Crouch for The New York Times

The United States Embassy in Beijing posts on Twitter the readings of its air monitor, helping to spur awareness of the problem. The readings have more than 35,000 followers. The United States does not release similar readings from its New Delhi Embassy, saying the Indian government releases its own figures.

In China, concerns about air quality have transfixed many urban residents, and some government officials say curbing the pollution is a priority.

But in India, Delhi’s newly elected regional government did not mention air pollution among its 18 priorities, and India’s environment minister quit in December amid widespread criticism that she was delaying crucial industrial projects. Her replacement, the government’s petroleum minister, almost immediately approved several projects that could add considerably to pollution. India and China strenuously resisted pollution limits in global climate talks in Warsaw in November.

Frank Hammes, chief executive of IQAir, a Swiss-based maker of air filters, said his company’s sales were hundreds of times higher in China than in India.

“In China, people are extremely concerned about the air, especially around small children,” Mr. Hammes said. “Why there’s not the same concern in India is puzzling.”

In multiple interviews, Delhiites expressed a mixture of unawareness and despair about the city’s pollution levels. “I don’t think pollution is a major concern for Delhi,” said Akanksha Singh, a 20-year-old engineering student who lives on Delhi’s outskirts in Ghaziabad, adding that he felt that Delhi’s pollution problems were not nearly as bad as those of surrounding towns.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/01/26/world/INDIA/INDIA-articleLarge.jpg
A smoggy New Delhi. Sami Siva for The New York Times

In 1998, India’s Supreme Court ordered that Delhi’s taxis, three-wheelers and buses be converted to compressed natural gas, but the resulting improvements in air quality were short-lived as cars flooded the roads. In the 1970s, Delhi had about 800,000 vehicles; now it has 7.5 million, with 1,400 more added daily.

“Now the air is far worse than it ever was,” said Anumita Roy Chowdhury, executive director of the Center for Science and Environment.

Indians’ relatively poor lung function has long been recognized, but researchers assumed for years that the difference was genetic.

Then a 2010 study found that the children of Indian immigrants who were born and raised in the United States had far better lung function than those born and raised in India.

“It’s not genetics; it’s mostly the environment,” said Dr. MyLinh Duong, an assistant professor of respirology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

In a study published in October, Dr. Duong compared lung tests taken in 38,517 healthy nonsmokers from 17 countries who were matched by height, age and sex. Indians’ lung function was by far the lowest among those tested.

All of this has led some wealthy Indians to consider leaving.

Annat Jain, a private equity investor who returned to India in 2001 after spending 12 years in the United States, said his father died last year of heart failure worsened by breathing problems. Now his 4-year-old daughter must be given twice-daily breathing treatments.

“But whenever we leave the country, everyone goes back to breathing normally,” he said. “It’s something my wife and I talk about constantly.”

Malavika Vyawahare contributed reporting from New Delhi, and Edward Wong from Beijing.

[GeneChing]

actually, it's kinda pretty...


Spotted: Another bizarrely blue river appears in Jinan (http://shanghaiist.com/2014/02/21/another-blue-river-in-jinan.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/02/blue_river_jinan1.jpg

Another day, another polluted, bright blue river. A river in Jinan, Shandong province has turned a very unnatural shade of blue and this is not the first time it's happened, according to the residents.

The Jinan drainage management service center director Jiang Xiangdong said that the bizarre coloring comes from a nearby dormitory's sewage that was discharged into a rain flood ditch and carried through a moat into the river.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/02/blue_river_jinan2.jpg

According to the reports, the entrance of the moat's south gate bridge has been closed, and officials are now using a sewage pump to remove the discharge.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/02/blue_river_jinan3.jpg

[Syn7]

Looks cool. Can't smell that good though.

[Lokhopkuen]

8116
Everything is going to be just fine...

[Brule]

WTF?

That's gotta be photoshopped......

Mmmmm.....fish bacon.....

[GeneChing]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2anp2iFXtrs

[GeneChing]

The lead pic nailed it.

Face Masks on Peking University Statues Protest Beijing Smog (http://www.chinasmack.com/2014/pictures/face-masks-on-peking-university-statues-protest-beijing-smog.html)
by Bing on Wednesday, March 5, 2014 56 comments

Images of statues of some Chinese intellectuals in Peking University wearing masks have been wildly circulated online. This idea was figured out by some students from Peking University, as a “silent” protest against heavy smog.

http://i2.wp.com/img.chinasmack.com/www/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/statues-in-peking-university-wear-masks-01.jpg?resize=600%2C400

From Sina Weibo:

@头条新闻: Beijing Heavy Smog; Peking University Statues “Wear” Face Masks — Since February 20, the national meteorological center has for six days straight issued smog alert, and Beijing has already spent many days in the grey smog. With continuous smog in the “rain” season, pedestrians on the road are about to be overwhelmed with sorrow. With such pollution, even the statues an sculptures in Peking University “cannot take it anymore”, one after another donning face masks. Pictures: http://t.cn/8Fm7koR

From QQ & NetEase :
Beijing Severe Smog; Face Masks Put on Statues Throughout Peking University

[February] 24, Beijing, the fourth day of heavy smog besieging [the city], it is no longer news that pedestrians and even pet dogs are wearing face masks. To their surprise, on the Peking University campus, people discovered statues of Cai Yuanpei, Li Dazhao, Miguel de Cervantes and other scholars of the past with masks also put on them.

http://i1.wp.com/img.chinasmack.com/www/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/statues-in-peking-university-wear-masks-02.jpg?resize=600%2C900
Beijing severe smog, face masks placed on statues and busts in Peking University. Picture is of Li Dazhao’s statue.

http://i1.wp.com/img.chinasmack.com/www/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/statues-in-peking-university-wear-masks-03.jpg?resize=600%2C900
Picture is Cai Yuanpei’s statue.

http://i1.wp.com/img.chinasmack.com/www/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/statues-in-peking-university-wear-masks-04.jpg?resize=600%2C900
Picture is Cervantes’s statue.

http://i0.wp.com/img.chinasmack.com/www/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/statues-in-peking-university-wear-masks-05.jpg?resize=600%2C900
Picture is of the statue of distinguished Chinese contemporary economist Chen Daisun.

[Syn7]

The lead pic nailed it.

Word.

The whole dome thing is interesting. If you think about it, it's a likely future for humanity as a whole. By the time we are ready to start colonizing other planets, we'll have the whole biodome thing down from screwing up our own planet. We'll just consume and consume and consume...

Does anyone else think that going all out on the tech angle is the only realistic answer? We should minimize our impact, but there will always be that percentage that just won't pitch in.

[Raipizo]

Word.

The whole dome thing is interesting. If you think about it, it's a likely future for humanity as a whole. By the time we are ready to start colonizing other planets, we'll have the whole biodome thing down from screwing up our own planet. We'll just consume and consume and consume...

Does anyone else think that going all out on the tech angle is the only realistic answer? We should minimize our impact, but there will always be that percentage that just won't pitch in.

As long as you aren't stuck with Pauley Shore in the bio dome you should be fine :p

[GeneChing]

Guizhou to make 'fresh canned air' to boost tourism after Xi Jinping comments (http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1453848/guizhou-make-fresh-canned-air-boost-tourism-after-xi-jinping)

The launch came just weeks after Xi made exactly the same suggestion in a conversation with Guizhou delegates during the annual Chinese People’s Congress session in early March in Beijing
PUBLISHED : Friday, 21 March, 2014, 12:09pm
UPDATED : Friday, 21 March, 2014, 12:09pm
Amy Li chunxiao.li@scmp.com

http://www.scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/486x302/public/2014/03/21/tpbje201403163bb_41736555.jpg?itok=CFIUR94m
Flowers in Yinzhai Village of Guiding County, southwest China's Guizhou Province. Photo: Xinhua

Tourism authorities in China’s southwestern Guizhou province announced on Thursday plans to manufacture canned fresh air as part of a larger scheme to promote the southwestern region’s tourism, according to the bureau's official website.

The launch came just weeks after Xi made the suggestion in a conversation with delegates from Guizhou during the annual Chinese People’s Congress meeting in Beijing earlier this month.

In a discussion session with Xi, Guizhou governor Chen Min'er said Guizhou's average PM2.5 index was under 50, an indication of the province's impressive air quality.

Xi then commented that “air quality is now a deciding factor in people’s perception of happiness,” and suggested that Guizhou “sell air cans in the future,” according to Chinese media reports.

Guizhou is economically undeveloped compared to many coastal provinces, even its neighbouring Sichuan. The province is known for its beautiful scenery and is also rich in natural and environmental resources.

Fu Yingchun, head of Guizhou’s tourism bureau, told Chinese press on Thursday that cans will be sold as souvenirs to tourists. He said he was confident the "canned fresh air" campaign will succeed.

https://www.scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/486w/public/2014/03/21/chen.jpg?itok=K_dw6cdU
Chinese multimillionaire and high-profile philanthropist Chen Guangbiao hands out canned fresh air in Beijing in 2013. Photo: weibo screenshot

Guizhou officials are not the first Chinese to attempt to cash in on fresh air as pollution affects other major cities, including the Chinese capital.

Chinese multimillionaire and high-profile philanthropist Chen Guangbiao, in an environment campaign last year, handed out soda pop-sized cans of air on the streets of Beijing. He said the canned air was from pristine regions such as Xinjiang.

Tourism officials from the southern Fujian province also showcased "canned fresh Fujian air" when they went on a promotion trip in Beijing this month.

The news of Guizhou's canned air plan received a lukewarm reaction on Weibo, China's twitter-like service on Friday.

"We want fresh air, not canned air," one microblogger wrote.

"What a joke," another wrote, "These officials should resign."
As brilliant as the pet rock.

[Syn7]

There you go. Add to the pollution problem by manufacturing a useless product to show how they're not as polluted.

[PalmStriker]

The Chinese and Russian Governments will start producing clean energy as major solutions to pollution before any other developed countries for good reason: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY

[PalmStriker]

AND: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyqYP6f66Mw

[GeneChing]

I had some great times in that fine city, back in the day...:(

Smog-choked city gets a short breath of fresh air shipped from mountain (http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/851742.shtml?utm_content=buffer5b089&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#.UzmUxYWaKsJ)
Agencies | 2014-3-31 1:38:01
By China News Service

http://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2011/21c2734f-f7e7-4340-a3d1-37060ea14726.jpeg
Crowds gather to breathe bagged mountain air in Zhengzhou, Henan Province March 29. Photo: IC

Twenty bags of vacuum-packed mountain air were shipped to city dwellers in Zhengzhou, Henan Province as part of a promotional event to boost tourism at nearby Laojun Mountain, China News Service reported.

Locals lined up for a lungful from one of the 20 masks hooked up to pillow-sized bags filled with certified air from the mountain area on Saturday.

The campaign also aimed to raise public awareness of environmental protection, according to Xu Lei, manager of the Laojun Mountain scenic area, located 300 kilometers from Zhengzhou.

Locals couldn't get enough of the pollution-free air, with some heavy breathers ringing the bags to squeeze out every last air molecule.

Breathing from the disposable masks was limited to a few minutes for each person in order to stretch the precious supply.

"I felt my baby move right when I breathed in," said a woman surnamed Sun, who is eight months pregnant.

"I would love to walk in the mountain's forests after my child is born," Sun added.

[mawali]

The mainland does not care, and if they did, they believe they have an endless supply of bodies for capitalist endeavours. That being said, no amount of neo Daoist or neo Confucianist thought would prompt them to enforce health standards for their citizenry nor protect the environment. Same with other health issues, where psychological problems are seen as being induced by the devil meaning no social, financial or intervention strategies to realistically deal with mental health. The Dao is like that:cool:

[GeneChing]

China's pollution problem is the world's pollution problem. :(


China's pollution is messing with US weather, scientists say (http://shanghaiist.com/2014/04/17/chinas-pollution-messing-with-us-weather.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/erikcrouch/smog-us-west.jpg

Scientists in the US are claiming that China's air pollution is intensifying storms as it creeps along the Pacific Ocean, ultimately affecting weather patterns in North America. It won't stop until devours us all, SCMP reports:

A team from Texas, California and Washington State has found that pollution from Asia, much of which arising in China, is leading to more intense cyclones, increased precipitation and more warm air in the mid-Pacific moving towards the north pole.

According to the team’s findings, which were released earlier this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, these changes could ultimately contribute to erratic weather in the US.

The authors of the findings claim to have provided a global, multi-scale perspective of climatic effects resulting from Asia's pollution, one being "intensification of the Pacific storm track", where storms accumulate before coming in to the US's west coast.

Meanwhile in China, people have proposed absurd solutions to combat the chronic s-m-o-g, including building giant domes over Beijing, deploying smog-busting drones and selling packaged fresh air.

All is as it should be.

[GeneChing]

They should make them like monster Roombas.

Huge public vacuum cleaners proposed to clean Beijing air

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/erikcrouch/huge_air_filter.jpg

Beijing and the rest of China may be able to continue pouring chemicals and particulate matter into the country's air, but without the staggering health and aesthetic costs, if these massive air-vacuums ever reach production. Gigantic smog-sucking ionizers, strategically placed throughout major cities, may be China's best hope for clean air without, well, making traffic and factories illegal.

The devices were designed by Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde, and featured in the Scientific American. The "vacuum cleaners" would function similarly to small, apartment-use air cleaners, but on a massive scale:

[The device] uses high-voltage, low-amp electricity to create an electrostatic field. Particles flowing across the field—enclosed in a box—become positively charged and attach themselves to a grounded electrode, which need to be scraped clean periodically. [...]

Plans for the Beijing device center on a large octagonal structure eight meters tall with intake vents at the top and exhaust vents in the middle, out of which will flow smog-free air. The steel structure will weigh about nine metric tons. To demonstrate the absence of smog in the freshair zone, lasers will shoot out beams, which will be invisible in a particle-free environment.

It has clean air, a cool design, and lasers. We can't wait to see if this device ever goes into use although (for a large number of reasons) don't hold your breath.

[GeneChing]

I wonder how much exhaust this water cannon puts out?

Giant water cannon won't kill smog: experts (http://www.china.org.cn/environment/2014-05/13/content_32367666.htm)
Ecns.cn, May 13, 2014

http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20140513/001ec949c49014dbaf5f02.jpg

A government department in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, has invested nearly one million yuan ($160,000) in a removable mist cannon designed to fight the city's dirty air, yet experts say the giant sprayer does little to reduce the density of PM2.5, the major contributor to the city's smog, the Beijing News reported on Monday.

The photo taken on May 9, 2014 shows a removable mist cannon which can reduce dust in air working on a street in Xi'an, Shaanxi province. [Photo/cnwest.com]

The Parks and Woods Bureau of the city's Xincheng district bought the machine from an environmental equipment manufacturer in Guangzhou with government financing of 900,000 yuan.

The 10-ton machine can spray water a distance of up to 600 meters and 70 meters high. The water goes up as a fine mist and sticks to dust to form larger particles, which fall to the surface under force of gravity.

Experts say that as a small-scale effort to dampen dust in Xi'an, the machine can help a little.

Pan Xiaochuan, an environmental expert at Peking University, said on Sunday that the machine's role in cleaning air pollution is temporary. Although the machine can reduce its surrounding pollutants within a short period of time after water is sprayed, its effects don't last long.

The machine is effective in controlling dust from construction sites, but it is useless in combating fine particles like PM2.5, according to a professor of atmospheric governance from Beijing.

"Fine particles like PM2.5 can form pollution layers which are over 200 meters above the ground," said the professor.

The major pollution sources in Xi'an are coal combustion, vehicle emissions and industrial releases, not dust, he added.

[GeneChing]

...maybe the wrath of god.


Wenzhou river mysteriously turns blood-red overnight (http://shanghaiist.com/2014/07/25/wenzhou-river-turns-blood-red-overnight.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/blood-river-wenzhou1.jpg

And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.

A river in Wenzhou, taking notes from a page in the Bible's book of Revelation, began flowing a sinister blood-red color overnight, local residents discovered yesterday morning, despite there being no chemical factories nearby.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/blood-river-wenzhou3.jpg

The 350-meter-long river is located in a village of Wenzhou’s Cangnan Country. By the time most residents woke up yesterday morning, they were shocked to see that the water had turned a bright red color.

According to a villager surnamed Chao, the river water looked normal around 4:00 a.m., but after an hour or so, the red coloring began to filter through. There was no detectable odor from the river, he added.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/blood-river-wenzhou6.jpg

“The river's color was normal yesterday," another resident said. "It's really scary to see the clear river turned into 'blood water' in only a night.”

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/blood-river-wenzhou4.jpg

Only a market, a few homes and domestic rubbish are found along the river. No chemical industries have been built in the village, and the residents claim that they've never seen such a phenomenon before.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/blood-river-wenzhou5.jpg

The local environmental department is still investigating the red water flowing through the river. Due to a lack of evidence of industrial pollution, they suspect that the “blood river” was the result of people pouring red pollutants into the water

According to China News, the river was seemingly back to normal around 5:00 p.m. yesterday and maybe the world isn't going to end after all.

In 2012, water flowing through the Yangtze River in Chongqing baffled residents when it suddenly turned bright shade of red, and the previous year, the Jian River in Henan province's Luoyang turned red after being polluted by a powerful dye dumped by illegal dye workshops.

[Images Via News.163]

By Jennifer Hui

[GeneChing]

LOOK: Sickeningly huge trash buildup at Hubei's Three Gorges Reservoir (http://shanghaiist.com/2014/08/26/trash-buildup-three-gorges-dam.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/08/three-gorges-trash-1.jpg

Residents maneuvering through the massive spread of garbage sitting in the water at Hubei's Three Gorges Reservoir have picked up plastic, shoes, wine bottles, pills, toothpaste, drinking bottles and more abandoned products, China News reports.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/08/three-gorges-trash-2.jpg

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/08/three-gorges-trash-3.jpg

Reporters at the scene photographed residents picking through the trash. This particular day's finds included a drinking bottle and a shoe...

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/08/three-gorges-trash-4.jpg

A LOT of timber...

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/08/three-gorges-trash-5.jpg

Scraps of iron...

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/08/three-gorges-trash-6.jpg

Pills, a sole and a single flip-flop were also found there.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/08/three-gorges-trash-7.jpg

It almost puts Shijiazhuang's Trash Mountain to shame. Almost.

[Images via China News]

By Christy Lau Remember when Three Gorges was all about the dam?

[GoldenBrain]

It sure didn't take very long to eff that Three Gorges area up. So sad!

[Syn7]

How long ago was it still pristine?

[GoldenBrain]

How long ago was it still pristine?

It was completed in 2012. I'm not sure how pristine it was but I would think that since they basically created an entirely new water reservoir it should have been pretty nice.

[Syn7]

Do you think it's because of the dam? I'm too lazy to google what was there before and what condition it was in.

[GoldenBrain]

Do you think it's because of the dam? I'm too lazy to google what was there before and what condition it was in.

I believe there where three rivers which they damed hence the three rivers gorge name. So, if it is the dam that's collecting all that trash then that means a whole lot of it was floating out that river to who knows where in the world. There were several villages and numerous homes relocated from the rivers during construction so there must have been even more trash before the dam.

One thing is for sure, WE as a WORLD need to get a handle on this trash thing. This kind of behavior is not sustainable and looks nasty.

[GeneChing]

Three Gorges Dam.


Reservoir at Hubei's Three Gorges Dam is a garbage-strewn pool of hell (http://shanghaiist.com/2014/10/07/reservoir-three-gorges-dam-pool-of-hell.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/10/3-gorges-dam-dirty.jpg

Visitors to Hubei's Three Gorges Dam over the National Day holiday were greeted by a heinously large layer of filth and garbage floating along the reservoir, according to photos taken at the scenic spot earlier this week.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/10/3-gorges-dam-dirty2.jpg

The Three Gorges Dam, once dubbed "one of China's biggest environmental nightmares", is the world's largest power station in terms of installed capacity. The project also sets a record for displacing over 1.4 million residents, submerging 13 cities, 140 towns and over 1,300 villages throughout its construction.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/10/3-gorges-dam-dirty3.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/10/3-gorges-dam-dirty4.jpg

Environmentalists have blamed the submergence of factories, mines and waste dumps as well as the presence of huge industrial centers upstream as the source of the rubbish and pollutants floating on the reservoir.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/10/3-gorges-dam-dirty5.jpg

Sadly, little effect is made by these hapless workers, who maneuver through the festering pit equipped with tiny nets that make but a small dent in the swath of plastics and pollutants floating dubiously ahead.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/10/3-gorges-dam-dirty6.jpg

The project is still a hit among tourists in China. The dam saw a record number of visitors over the National Day holiday, with over 40,000 tourists visiting (the upper limit for a single day) last Thursday. Each year, around 1.8 million tourists come to observe the dam and all the unholiness that flows through it.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2014/10/3-gorges-dam-dirty7.jpg


Contact the author of this article or email tips@shanghaiist.com with further questions, comments or tips.
By Katie Nelson in News on Oct 7, 2014 11:00 AM

[GeneChing]

I wonder if there's matching lingerie for the honeymoon.


Look: Beijing artist shows off her wedding dress made of nearly 1,000 white face masks (http://shanghaiist.com/2014/10/21/masks-wedding-dress.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/pollution-art3.jpg

Beijing's worsening air quality has spawned a new wave of anti-pollution based art projects created to increase awareness of the situation. The latest of these projects is a wedding dress made of gauze masks (you know, the ones you should technically be wearing almost every day in major cities) created by Beijing-based artist, Kong Ning.

The wedding dress is made from 999 masks and has an elegant ten meter long train. It was modeled in the city by Kong on Monday, reports NetEase. It should be ready just in time for winter haze season.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/pollution-art1.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/pollution-art2.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/pollution-art4.jpg

By Robert Ridley

[GeneChing]

Look: Face mask fashion hits the runaway in Beijing (http://shanghaiist.com/2014/10/29/look_smog_masks_on_the_runway.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/fashionmasks7.jpg

With all the smog suffocating Beijing lately, face masks have become all the rage. Everybody is wearing them! For China Fashion Week, one designer has capitalized on this fashion/health craze and unveiled a line of sports wear that allows you to exercise in hazardous conditions and, if anyone can actually see you, look really good doing it.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/fashionmasks5.jpg

The Qiaodan Yin Peng Sports Wear Collection seems to envision a post-apocalyptic world where we are still concerned about how we dress. The collection joins other smog-inspired creations, like the wedding dress made of 999 face masks and the "facekini," that should come to define fashion in China with the way things are going.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/fashionmasks8.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/fashionmasks10.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/fashionmasks6.jpg

by Alex Linder Kinda cool, but I'd be hankering for something a little more Darth Vader-ish.

[GeneChing]

Mask on too.


Look: Wax celebrities equipped with face masks in smoggy Shanxi (http://shanghaiist.com/2014/12/19/shanxi-wax-museum-smog-masks-stars.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/wax-museum-1.jpg

A wax museum in Taiyuan, Shanxi province held an environmental performance art show yesterday wherein all the visitors as well as more than 10 wax statues of celebrities, including PSY, Kim Jong-un, Barack Obama, Mr. Bean and Michael Jackson, were "required" to wear anti-dust masks, NetEase News reports.

The organizer aimed to remind people to protect the environment, travel with low carbon and fight against the smoggy weather.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/wax-museum-2.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/wax-museum-3.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/wax-museum-4.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/wax-museum-7.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/wax-museum-5.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/wax-museum-6.jpg

The Air Quality Index read 127, considered unhealthy, in some Shanxi cities today. The National Meteorological Center yesterday warned that a blanket of smog was headed towards Beijing and Tianjin as well as some parts of Hebei and Henan. Monitoring data also observed that more northeastern and northwestern regions in China, as well as areas south of the Yangtze River, were experiencing worse haze than usual

By Dina Li

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421914688&v=zfF7ZmKMUX0&x-yt-cl=84503534

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM

[mawali]

A public health issue whereby there are no regulations in force to make sure public disposal of garbage goes to the required facilities. Better yet, no enforcement of regulations so haulers dispose of stuff wherever they want. I would hate to think of where hospital waste and other materials end up!

[curenado]

Last undoctored picture I saw of China, the water was mud brown and so was the air that blocked out buildings.
Surprising they don't have more pollution related health issues.
The same mindless, rapacious destruction that will continue going on here too. The more we hear about environment, the more of it gets destroyed.

[bawang]

Last undoctored picture I saw of China, the water was mud brown and so was the air that blocked out buildings.
Surprising they don't have more pollution related health issues.
The same mindless, rapacious destruction that will continue going on here too. The more we hear about environment, the more of it gets destroyed.

either you industrialize and be exploited by gringos and heavy pollution, or u turn into narco infestetd sh1thole. its a tough world.

[GeneChing]

That can't be the real color, can it? That's crazy.



Red skies and mud rain in China as apocalypse begins earlier than expected (http://en.rocketnews24.com/2015/04/19/red-skies-and-mud-rain-in-china-as-apocalypse-begins-earlier-than-expected/)
Mike
2 days ago

https://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/reddawn1.jpg?w=580&h=369

Listen guys. I have some bad news. You might want to sit down for this.

The apocalypse is clearly happening right now, and if you’re in China, Mongolia or that general region, you may want to go ahead and kiss your loved ones goodbye, because Cthulhu himself, or some other terrible dark deity, is already sending warning of the end times in the form of blood-red skies and freaking black stuff raining from the heavens. Sorry, guys, but we’re clearly all doomed.

The below photographs come from a city in Inner Mongolia (which is, confusingly, actually part of China) called Aershan, where, on April 16, the sky – apparently out of the, er… blue – turned such an unnaturally vibrant shade of red that many residents reportedly for realsies thought the end-times were nigh.

And who can blame them? I mean, look at it. That’s the kind of red only seen by those who have gazed into the mouth of madness and lived to tell the tale. We should know.

https://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/reddawn3.jpg?w=580&h=773

Of course, there’s also the mud rain, which we are suspicious isn’t mud at all but actually petrified pieces of unicorn soul being regurgitated by Dark Lord Cthulhu, whom you should probably repent to immediately just to be safe. In fact, you should go ahead and repent to whatever deities you can think of in a long, stream-of-consciousness ramble, preferably while wearing a sandwich board about the end times and a tinfoil hat. People will understand because, look at this!

https://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/reddawn2.jpg?w=580&h=392

Adding to the craziness is the fact that Beijing apparently experienced a bizarre sandstorm of Biblical proportions on the same day as Aershan’s apocalyptic mud rain. You might want to get started on bucket list of yours sometime soon.

▼ “We’re doomed.”

https://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/enhanced-buzz-14899-1372553945-5.jpg?w=580

Source: Byoukan Sunday
Photos: Xinhuaxia News Rugrats image via Buzzfeed

[GeneChing]

a blood red two-fer no less. :eek:


What pollution? Toxic emissions turn Shenzhen canals blood-red (http://shanghaiist.com/2015/04/20/toxic-emissions-turn-shenzhen-canals-blood-red.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2015/04/shenzhen-canal-red-1.jpg

In today's installment of heavily-polluted rivers turning unnatural colors in China, an ink-production company is believed to be responsible for turning these Shenzhen canals an unsettling shade of red.

Dumping of noxious pollutants has already been to blame for a Wenzhou waterway being coated with a revolting mustard-yellow slime and a Luoyang river looking as if it were subject to a biblical plague; and now it has caused this Shenzhen reservoir to turn blood-red.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2015/04/shenzhen-canal-red-2.jpg

The appearance of bio-hazard suits and gas masks is normally a pretty reliable indicator that some environmentally-unfriendly contamination is afoot, so local residents had good reason to worry when this foul-colored water spilled over the catchment.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2015/04/shenzhen-canal-red-3.jpg

The Central Water Bureau announced that an official investigation will begin shorty, while in the meantime, the ink company responsible for pumping their tainted waste water into the sewerage has been ordered to shut down indefinitely, reports NetEase News.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2015/04/shenzhen-canal-red-4.jpg

Its unlikely the ink company bosses will have the audacity to dispute the fact that their chemicals caused just a tiny bit of pollution, but if they do, we've already seen the best way to deal with those in pollution-denial in China. A Hubei official was given a serving of humble contaminated-fruit pie when she was asked to eat a deformed fruit spoiled by pollution from a nearby cement plant on live TV.

http://shanghaiist.com/upload/2015/04/shenzhen-canal-red-5.jpg

Previously in shocking pollution horror stories:
100,000 kg of fish die in Guangdong fish farm
Three Gorges Dam becomes pool of garbage wasteland
Zhejiang landfill contaminates water supply

By Liam Bourke

[boxerbilly]

a blood red two-fer no less. :eek:

Is chi kung practice safe there?

[Jimbo]

Forget chi kung/qigong; I'd be more concerned about simply eating, drinking and breathing over there...

[GeneChing]

Talk about your epiphanies when you reach the very bottom...:(


Man rethinks suicide after jumping into 'filthy' Zhejiang river (http://shanghaiist.com/2015/06/15/man_rethinks_suicide_after_jumping.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shanghaiist/man-rethinks-suicide.jpg

Who would've thought water pollution could actually save a life? A 48-year-old man who'd attempted to commit suicide by drowning himself in a Zhejiang river last week decided that the water was "too filthy" and swam several meters back to shore.

The man, surnamed Liu, comes from the Pujiang county of Zhejiang province. He explained to police that he had lost quite a lot of money from business this year, and impulsively decided to end his life on Wednesday, according to Finance Gucheng.

http://shanghaiist.com/assets_c/2015/06/man-rethinks-suicide-2-thumb-640x410-898030.jpg

So, at around 7:00 that evening, he jumped into the Yiwu River. As soon as he hit the water, however, he regretted his decision.

"The water is so filthy and smelly that it's too disgusting to be swallowed," he said.

The current of the river, accelerated by the rain, made it difficult for Liu to swim back to shore, but he managed to keep himself afloat and drifted downstream all the way from Dongyang city to Yiwu city, where he found a protruding spot of land and waited for help.

Yiwu police arrived at the scene after receiving call from passers-by. They threw a buoy ring to the man and pulled him ashore. Medical staff said he sustained no serious injuries.

Liu said he is grateful to still be alive.

"I will never again try to kill myself," he said.

[Images via Finance Gucheng]

[curenado]

Baby, I'm pretty sure the poor fellow was successful and did kill his self. He's just still walking around for a couple months.
I do applaud his self esteem in rejecting to drown directly in that.

[bawang]

whats with all these china sh1thole porn on off topic all the time lol

[curenado]

whats with all these china sh1thole porn on off topic all the time lol

Good for people to be thankful and have more respect. Think of people they treat better than their own government. Trade what they can with em?

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e1qGc66W9k

[GeneChing]

50X higher than that considered safe by WHO. And WHO tends to be conservative with such estimates. :eek:


China decries Shenyang pollution called 'worst ever' by activists (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34773556)
10 November 2015

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/6216/production/_86601152_030039429-1.jpg
AFP
Pollution is a perennial problem in the industrial northeast of China

Chinese state media and netizens have criticised high pollution levels in the northeast city of Shenyang, which activists have said could be the "worst ever" air quality seen in the country.

On Sunday pollution readings were about 50 times higher than that considered safe by the World Health Organization.

State media have blamed the local government for the thick smog.

Pollution is a perennial problem in China's northeast, home to heavy industries including coal mining.

In some parts of Shenyang, Sunday's readings of tiny particulate which can get into the lungs, known as PM 2.5, exceeded 1,400 mg per cubic metre, according to state media People's Daily.
The WHO recommends a maximum 24-hour average of 25 mg per cubic metre.

"As far as we are aware from the data we have been observing over the past few years, this is the highest ever PM 2.5 level recording" in the country, Dong Liansai a campaigner with environmental group Greenpeace, told AFP news agency.

There has been no government confirmation of this assertion.

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/FA6E/production/_86601146_030040873-1.jpg
AP
Residents expressed their outrage on the microblogging site Weibo

'Unreasonable'

The deterioration in air quality came as the city's coal-powered heating system fired up for the winter.

Local media reported delays in the enacting of emergency measures, such as warnings to the public and issuance of stop-work orders to work sites.

A Global Times editorial blamed local officials for inexperience in tackling pollution and "inconsistent channels of communication". It also blamed "unreasonable modes of energy consumption and [the] industrial structure".

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/B036/production/_86601154_030037388-1.jpg
AFP
Many Shenyang residents were still seen on the streets without masks amid the choking levels of pollution

But it also called for public understanding saying that in general, local governments "are still on a learning curve".

On the microblogging platform Weibo, Shenyang residents have continued to post pictures of themselves wearing masks and of the city plunged in a hazy gloom, using the hashtag #Shenyang Haze#, as the pollution persisted.

"I can't go on living like this, #Shenyang Haze#, if this goes on any longer everyone will probably get cancer," complained user BLS-Christine on Tuesday.

Multiple Weibo users shared ghostly images of neon signs "floating" in the air as buildings were rendered nearly invisible by the smog

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/1488E/production/_86601148_85bbbf08-e379-435b-80a0-7fea5e64f1e0.jpg
Weibo

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/13F6/production/_86601150_5cbc46cb-ab9d-4b3e-a36d-a85971b6c68e.jpg
Weibo

Earlier this year China's environment ministry announced that only eight out of the country's 74 biggest cities had passed the government's basic air quality standards in 2014.
Most of the cities found to have the worst air were in the northeast of the country.

China is attempting to cut pollution but still relies heavily on coal for its energy and industrial needs.

[GeneChing]

Worst smog of the winter envelopes Beijing (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2015/11/winter-smog-pollution-beijing-china-151130063333537.html)
More than 250,000 people in China's biggest cities could have their lives cut short from high levels of air pollution.
30 Nov 2015 09:41 GMT | Weather, Environment, Asia, China

Authorities in the Chinese capital have warned of "severe pollution" and advised the city's 20 million inhabitants to stay indoors.

Beijing has been shrouded in grey smog since Friday, reducing visibility to a few hundred metres.

Some pollution readings in the city have reached 22 times the level considered safe by the World Health Organization - despite commitments from the government to improve the environment.

Beijing and many other northern cities in China are notorious for their winter smog, which is caused by a combination of air pollution and weather conditions.

More than a quarter of a million people in China's biggest cities could have their lives cut short by high levels of air pollution, according to a recent joint study by Peking University and Greenpeace.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection has forecast severe pollution for Beijing and other areas until Tuesday, when strong winds are expected to clear some pollutants.

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2015/11/30/1c14113459504d0c9518000312cafe3d_6.jpg
Beijing has issued its highest smog alert of the year after pollution reached hazardous levels. [Andy Wong/AP]

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2015/11/30/40ef54bca3014083b2d9d65b86d171c6_6.jpg
Smog has engulfed large parts of the country despite efforts to clean up the foul air. [Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters]

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2015/11/30/1a89fc3e78014c8fa5ac93d66385ae04_6.jpg
Beijing plans to ramp up its already tough car emission standards by 2017 in an effort by one of the world's most polluted cities to improve its often hazardous air quality. [Reuters]

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2015/11/30/f0171cb9fc7d46d8bd92be9150331bc6_6.jpg
A woman sells paper kites at Tiananmen Square on a day with poor air quality. [Mark Schiefelbein/AP]

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2015/11/30/237726f89a76405881eac079b9c45ee7_6.jpg
The Forbidden City seen through the haze. [Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters]

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2015/11/30/0376b0c1eeda4debbdc4e753af3a1c24_6.jpg
Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau warned that poor air quality could continue in the coming days. [Rolex Dela Pena/EPA]

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2015/11/30/36c859b7a5f64f60ae1039ee8f501ce2_6.jpg
Some of the worst smog of the winter enveloped Beijing on November 29 where air pollution levels are nearly 15 times the safety limit set by the World Health Organisation, according to US figures. [Rolex Dela Pena/EPA]

Ironic that this is happening while the Paris Climate Summit is happening.

[Jimbo]

Well, that pollution isn't only China's problem. It all blows out to other countries, even including to North America.

[GeneChing]

I just spoke to someone in Beijing yesterday and they said it was unbelievably horrible but just that evening (he was calling at night to reach me in the morning) it cleared up inexplicably for a moment and he saw some stars.


LOOK: Airpocalypse smothers Beijing as breathtaking PM2.5 levels hit 976 in some parts of the capital (http://shanghaiist.com/2015/12/01/beijing_airpocalypse.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/beijing_smoggy.jpg

On Sunday, Beijing issued its highest smog alert of the year, upgrading the yellow warning which had been in place for the past few days to orange, resulting in more than 2,100 major companies in polluting industries suspending their operations and all construction sites stopping their work in order to cut emissions.
But, it seems like too little, too late as the capital is now experiencing its most severe levels of pollution this year.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVHXWEdU4AQvvk0.jpg:small

People's Daily,China ✔@PDChina
The reading of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in #Beijing on November 30, 2015
9:01 PM - 30 Nov 2015
58 58 Retweets 35 35 likes

Yup, that reads a PM2.5 level of 2,242. The WHO consideres the safe level of PM2.5 particles to be 25 micrograms per cubic meter and China has a national standard of 75 micrograms. While this reading hasn't been confirmed elsewhere, several monitoring sites downtown recorded levels of more than 600 micrograms per cubic meter, while in the Beijing suburbs, readings were as high as 976 micrograms.
With air pollution levels at 35 times what is considered safe, schools in Beijing have been ordered to keep their students indoors today. Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping is missing out on all the fun due to his impeccably timed trip to the COP21 UN Conference on climate change summit in Paris. He'll be back in Beijing on Sunday.
This all comes as China has recently announced that it has achieved the pollution reduction targets for major pollutants outlined in its 12th Five Year Plan six months ahead of schedule. It also comes after reports that China is burning 17% more coal than it says it is.
Cities in the northeast of China frequently experience high levels of air pollution during winter due to the concentration of heavy industry and coal-fired power plants in the region. On Sunday, Hohhot more or less resembled the landscape of Mars during a dust storm.
Officials say that the heavy smog will continue until Wednesday when a cold front will move in from the west to help disperse the pollutants, allowing Beijingers to once again see more than 100 yards in front of them.


https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/12274736_10153840153556030_8636973568211023261_n.j pg?oh=0afbb750653c6f3bde7a5c2ef5043c96&oe=56D7B130

Shanghaiist
News/Media Website · 820,454 Likes · November 30 at 5:00pm ·
In case you have trouble finding Beijing's CCTV Headquarters, helpful netizens on Weibo have drawn you this handy diagram.
>> http://shst.me/cmw
1,137 Likes · 103 Comments · 274 Shares

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/beijing_smoggy2.jpg
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At least people will stop complaining about how cold it's been.
[Images via NetEase]
Contact the author of this article or email tips@shanghaiist.com with further questions, comments or tips.
By Alex Linder in News on

There are more pix but they are all just gray...

[GeneChing]

It's been over a decade since I've been in Beijing and the smog there was horrendous back then. What would a red alert be like? I can't even imagine.


Get your masks ready! Beijing issues its first ever RED ALERT for smog (http://shanghaiist.com/2015/12/07/beijing_issues_red_alert_smog.php)

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/red_alert2.jpg

Despite earlier reports to the contrary, Beijing will issue its first ever red alert for air pollution as heavy smog is set to descend upon the city in the coming days.
A red alert means that from 7 a.m. on Tuesday to 12 p.m. on Thursday, public schools will be closed and there will be a strict odd-even car ban imposed. Also, it should go without saying, but no barbecuing!
The city's air pollution reached year-high levels early last week with thick smog that shrouded landmarks and horrified the world during a global conference on climate change in Paris attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Initiially, this latest batch of smog wasn't predicted to be quite so toxic as the last, though authorities raised the alert level to "orange" over the weekend. Schools were to be required to keep their students indoors and heavy polluting factories were required to shut down until Thursday, when the smog is once again predicted to be dispersed.
But no longer! IT'S A RED ALERT! Everyone put on your masks, grab your industrial vacuum cleaners and follow Nut Brother into battle!

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/smog_brick.jpg

Contact the author of this article or email tips@shanghaiist.com with further questions, comments or tips.
By Alex Linder in News on Dec 7, 2015 11:59 PM

[GeneChing]

Oh Canada....


That's one way to escape the smog! Bottles of FRESH AIR from Canada are a hot sale in China as pollution levels remain high (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/peoplesdaily/article-3359154/Bottles-fresh-air-Canada-hot-sale-China-smog-remains-high.html)
Sales of Vitality Air from Alberta soared since Beijing's smog red alert
Last week authorities issued highest ever pollution warning in China
Canisters of air are being sold for up to £42 each, depending on the size
Company spokesman said Chinese customers have emptied their stock
By CHLOE LYME FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 13:37 EST, 14 December 2015 | UPDATED: 22:12 EST, 14 December 2015

Since China's capital city Beijing issued its first ever air pollution red alert last week, sales of bottled Canadian fresh mountain air to Chinese customers have soared.

Two entrepreneurs from Alberta have been selling Vitality Air for just over a year, but over the last two weeks their sales to China have increased dramatically, reports The People's Daily Online.

The red alert over air pollution was issued by Beijing authorities on December 7, lasting three days, amid the second bout of bad air this month. During this time PM2.5 levels - tiny hazardous airborne particles - exceeded 900 micrograms per cubic metre.

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A Chinese man shows how a canister is used. The demand for bottled air by Vitality has soared in China

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The company is in talks with distributors in China wanting to stock their product in stores across the country

Vitality Air was co-founded by Moses Lam and Troy Paquette in 2014. They travel to high rocky mountains in Alberta, western Canada for the fresh air, which is home to over 600 lakes.

In the mountains, massive cans are filled through clean compression with pure revitalising air, something that is not found in Beijing during the harshest days.

On their website Vitalityair.com it says: 'We strive to provide a premium quality necessity that isn't always available.

'The best and the freshest necessity of life - fresh clean air and oxygen.'

Speaking to the MailOnline, Harrison Wang, Vitality Air's China representative, said: 'It's been a pretty wild ride for us as we only started to market the product a month and a half ago.

We got the website up and running, then put Vitality Air on Taobao – a Chinese website similar to eBay for online shopping – and we sold out almost instantly.'

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Vitality Air: A screen grab from their website showing the different types of bottled air that can be purchased

Their first shipment to China was a little over 500 bottles of air, their next shipment in two weeks will be around 700.

'We have sold everything, and we now have a bunch of customers and a people wanting to be our distributors,' said Harrison.

It's an exciting time for the company, putting their product on the market in China has been a fast learning curve, especially when it comes to the country's e-commerce industry.

'Consumer spending power is like something we have never seen before and we are pleasantly surprised.

'We know the demand is big so we are being reactive instead of proactive, and doing our best to accommodate for the market needs and demands,' he said.

Moses and Troy from Vitality Air have spent time in China, and they are fully aware of the current pollution crisis.

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Tourists donned masks in Beijing's Tian'anmen Square as smog levels reached a red alert warning for the first time ever on December 8 last week

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Sales of pollution masks increased massively last week when Beijing was hit with a red alert pollution warning

'The pollution is certainly a problem and the government is taking aim to sort it, we see it has an issue and we want to give people the opportunity to inject a little bit of fresh into their daily lives,' said Harrison.


They initially put the fresh mountain air into sealed plastic bags and sold it on eBay for 99 cents (65p) per bag.



Now they are selling one canister of compressed air for up to $46 dollars (£42) depending on the size.

That's around 400 Yuan to Chinese residents for a can of air, which is 200 times the price of a bottle of mineral water - usually around two Yuan (20p).

As well as China, the company has had sales in countries including Iran and Afghanistan.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/12/14/18/2F5CE88D00000578-3359154-Businessman_Chen_Guangbiao_made_his_fortune_sellin g_cans_of_air_-a-3_1450118373715.jpg
Businessman Chen Guangbiao made his fortune selling cans of air for 80p each to over 10 million people

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Air is already being sold to residents and tourists in China in glass bottles and tin cans

Selling 'fresh air' in a bag or a bottle is not a new commodity in China.

Entrepreneurs from both home and abroad have been trying to capitalize on the country's pollution problem for a while.

In 2014 China planned to offer tourists affected by the smog, bottles of 'oxygen'.

The bottles were to be manufactured as part of a tourism scheme by authorities in China's south-west Guizhou Province.

In 2013 one lucky Chinese businessmen made millions selling soda pop-sized cans of air at 80 cents (53p) a can. Chen Guangbiao told reporters he sold 10 million cans in 10 days.

When the red alert was issued in China, the authorities announced plans to close schools, temporarily shut factories and take half of the city's cars off the roads.

The country's high pollution levels has been described as an environmental crisis by the World Health Organisation.

[GeneChing]

Good news for China, but still bad news for the earth.


Which country has the worst air pollution? Clue: it's not China (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/02/which-country-has-the-worst-air-pollution?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+inside-the-world-economic-forum+%28Inside+The+World+Economic+Forum%29)

https://assets.weforum.org/article/image/large_6aYiq3cGNoVj2N63p3AKBrf7ll5QnUHv-0LJhwAI3IM.jpg
Smoke rises from a chimney of a garbage processing plant on the outskirts of the northern Indian city of Chandigarh. Image: REUTERS/Ajay Verma

Written by Donald Armbrecht, Writer and social media producer, Freelance
Published Wednesday 24 February 2016

When people think of poor air quality, images of a smoggy Beijing skyline often come to mind. China's difficulties with pollution have given it the reputation of having the worst air quality in the world.

But while China undoubtedly still has work to do, the world's second largest economy has made huge strides in improving its air quality. Last year, in the quarter ending 30 September, China was the largest centre of investment in the world for renewable energy, with $26.7 billion - twice that of the second largest, the United States. In 2014, it led the world in new clean energy, adding 56 gigawatts to the grid, four times what the US contributed.

A new study by Greenpeace shows that these investments are starting to make a difference. Using NASA satellite images to measure microscopic particles, the study found that levels of PM2.5 particles in China had decreased by 17% between 2010 and 2015. In the United States the fall was 15%.

https://assets.weforum.org/editor/QEALF8BqCa073UqkLEQUJpDsD-me6td_Er0YCK5wdrw.gif

That's great news for China, but not so much for India, where the situation has gotten worse. Annual PM2 levels in New Delhi were at 128 compared to Beijing's 81 and Washington D.C.'s 12. The study lays out recommendations for India to curb their PM2 levels, which include a pollution action plan to enforce compliance of coal-fired power plants and the institution of air quality monitoring systems in urban areas. China launched its own action plan in 2013.

Thirteen of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world, according a World Health Organization (WHO) report from 2013, are in India. This has led to fears for the health of children living in Asia’s third largest economy.

Using satellite technology to better understand the state and impact of air pollution has become increasingly valuable to climatologists. Davis Crisp, Senior Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, presented the latest advancements and discoveries at the Annual Meeting of the World Champions last year.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJJZol2o1ug

[GeneChing]

...needs fire. :rolleyes:


ENVIRONMENT

https://news-images.vice.com/images/articles/meta/2016/03/08/chinas-toxic-waste-problem-is-just-as-bad-as-its-notorious-air-pollution-1457458512.jpg

China's Toxic Waste Problem Is Just as Bad as Its Notorious Air Pollution (https://news.vice.com/article/chinas-toxic-waste-problem-is-just-as-bad-as-its-notorious-air-pollution)
By Jake Bleiberg

March 8, 2016 | 9:40 am
Chinese media reports that police have made a big break in a toxic waste case that came to international attention after a restaurant owner died from inhaling poisonous gases coming from his kitchen drain.

Officials have traced the fumes back to highly toxic waste that the operator of a parking lot near the restaurant allowed allowed to be dumped on site, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

Between August 2014 and May 2015, the parking lot operator in the city of Baoding took payment from as many as 20 factories for the dumping of more than 3,400 tons of toxic waste, Xinhua said. Police arrested 27 suspects, according to the report.

While the death caused by this dumping has seen a full-scale investigation, it is merely one of many such incidents in a country that for decades has pushed for massive industrial and economic growth at the expense of the environment, says Jennifer Turner, director the Woodrow Wilson Center's China Environment Forum.

"This is not an uncommon thing that happened. This is an epidemic," said Turner, who explained that until recently the penalty for illegal dumping in China amounted to a single, "slap-on-the-hand fine" that sometimes made it cheaper for factories to pollute and pay than to properly dispose of toxic waste.

Baoding has a population of over 11 million and lies roughly 100 miles southwest of Beijing. In 2015 the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection found it to be the country's most polluted city. Baoding is in the same province, Hebei, as much of China's coal and steel industry and seven of the other top 10 most-polluted Chinese cities.

Air in Baoding — as in many other cities in China — regularly exceeds the level of pollution that the World Health Organization deems dangerous. According to a recent study, air pollution in China contributed to 1.6 million premature deaths in 2013 and this number is likely to continue rising, even as the country tries to cut its notorious levels of smog. China's so-called airpocalypse is a rising concern internationally, as well as domestically, but according to Turner, dumping toxic waste may have even more dire implications for the country's water.

In 2013, just under 60 percent of the groundwater in China's urban areas was classified as "very polluted," or "relatively polluted," according to a Ministry of Land and Resources study. Both of these statuses mean that water is unfit to drink without treatment, and Turner warned that the reality may be grimmer than official estimates suggest.

"The numbers are a bit dodgy, but there's general agreement that 30 to 35 percent of all the river and lake water in China is polluted to the level that it should not come into contact with humans," said Turner.

Pushed by political pressure from people living with endemic pollution, Turner said, China is beginning to crack down on polluters and work to disassemble the culture of corruption that often had local environmental bureaus turning a blind eye to illegal dumping at the behest of city governments. The shift has been facilitated by individual citizens and advocacy groups that use smartphones to photograph and report illegal waste disposal. In Beijing, Turner said, the ministries of environment and public housing have been crowdsourcing the effort to address water pollution, encouraging the public to send pictures and report the location of seemingly contaminated water.

While online watchdogs may be making it more difficult to ignore dangerous waste disposal, many on Chinese social media took a deeply ambivalent view of the news that the government had made arrests in the Baoding dumping case.

"Nobody gets caught if no one dies," wrote one person in a thread about the story on a news site run by Tencent QQ, a popular Chinese instant messaging app. "The environment pollution is just like chemical weapons."

Follow Jake Bleiberg on Twitter: @JZBleiberg

[GeneChing]

"Take thy rod, and stretch out thine hand upon the waters of Egypt, upon their streams, upon their rivers, and upon their ponds, and upon all their pools of water, that they may become blood; and that there may be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood, and in vessels of stone." Exodus 7:19


Apocalypse now! Alarming images of a Chinese waterway that turned BLOOD RED due to illegal waste discharge (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/peoplesdaily/article-3541401/Apocalypse-Alarming-images-Chinese-waterway-turning-BLOOD-RED-illegal-waste-discharge.html?ITO=applenews)

The colour changing Zhongting river has baffled residents in China
It's thought that the cause of the change is illegal waste discharge
The river stretches towards north-east China's Tianjin municipality

By VICKI CHENG and SOPHIE WILLIAMS FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 04:53 EST, 15 April 2016 | UPDATED: 05:37 EST, 15 April 2016

Locals have been left baffled after a section of the Zhongting River, close to northern China's historic Shengfang town turned red.

It's thought that the colour change which occurred on the April 12 has been caused by the illgeal dumping of excessive industrial waste, Huanqiu, affiliated with the People's Daily Online reports.

Local residents say they the water changed colour all of a sudden.

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Dangerous: Residents say this isn't an isolated case and the river changes a bright red shade a year ago

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Colourful water: According to locals, the Zhongting river changed colour all of a sudden on April 12

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Water from the river is said to be undrinkable after it turned a toxic red shade earlier this week

Environmental officials said on April 13 local iron and steel plants are the major source of pollution.

According to drone footage provided by people online, a wide stretch of the water is completely covered with red patches.

In images released online, the red river can be seen drastically contrasting with a clear river adjacent with it.

Local residents say that this phenomenon occurred a year ago and they believe that factories are the main cause.

Water from the Zhongting river is said to be undrinkable.

This isn't the first time that this has occurred in China.

In July 2014, residents of Xinmeizhou village, Zhejiang province were shocked to find that the nearby river had turned red in a matter of minutes.

Some filled plastic bottles with water and reported that the water had a strange smell.

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Illegal dumping: Environmental officials said local iron and steel plants are the major source of pollution

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/04/15/09/33338D6500000578-3541401-image-a-14_1460708873245.jpg
According to drone footage, a wide stretch of the water is completely covered with red patches

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/04/15/09/3333896B00000578-3541401-image-a-15_1460708877168.jpg
The red river can be seen drastically contrasting with a clear river adjacent with it

[GeneChing]

Apocalypse coming? City residents shocked to see more than 30 TONNES of dead fish appearing in a lake (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/peoplesdaily/article-3574624/Apocalypse-coming-City-residents-shocked-30-TONNES-dead-fish-appearing-lake.html?ITO=applenews)

The fish appeared floating on the water on May 4 in Hongcheng lake in Haikou, southern China's Hainan province
Around 40 workers were sent to the scene to start the clean up operation and have so far recovered over 30 tonnes
Haikou City Board of Marine and Fisheries say the cause of their death could be down to a change in salinity

By SOPHIE WILLIAMS FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 05:32 EST, 5 May 2016 | UPDATED: 06:19 EST, 5 May 2016

Residents of a Chinese city were shocked to see a vast number of dead fish appearing in a local lake yesterday.

Horrifying images show the animals covering a large part of Hongcheng Lake in Haikou, southern China's Hainan province.

Sanitation workers have been recovering the dead fish and have so far collected 30 tonnes, the People's Daily Online reports.

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Horrible discovery: The fish were discovered yesterday floating in Hongcheng Lake in Haikou, southern China's Hainan province

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Shocking images: Vast number of dead fish is seen covering a large part of the waters with modern city buildings at the background

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Starting the recovery process: The fish are thought to be scaled sardines, herring like fish that can be found in the Pacific Ocean

According to Haikou City Board of Marine and Fisheries, the large number of dead fish is due to a change in salinity.

Its suspected that the fish have floated in from another place.

40 sanitation workers have attended the scene to recover the deceased animals.

The fish are thought to be scaled sardines, herring like fish that can be found in the Pacific Ocean. Scaled Sardines can grow up to nine inches in length but are usually around half of that size.

Staff at the Marine and Fisheries Agency told local reporters that pollution can be ruled out as a cause of death.

They also said that they will investigate the matter further and take measures to prevent seawater from entering areas where freshwater fish reside.

This isn't the first case of tonnes of deceased fish being found in China.

In 2015, thousands of animals died overnight at a commercial fish farm in southern China's Guangdong province after the lake became polluted.

Over 1,000 tonnes of dead fish were found floating in the water near Huizhou City.

Workers rushed to clear the lake using plastic baskets and nets to scoop them out, creating a huge mountain of rotting fish on the shore.

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Disturbing images: Staff at the Marine and Fisheries Agency told reporters that pollution can be ruled out as a cause of death

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Clean up: According to Haikou City Board of Marine and Fisheries , the large number of dead fish is due to a change in salinity
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/05/05/09/33D5C15700000578-3574624--a-15_1462436138987.jpg
Sad images from Hainan: Sanitation workers have been recovering the dead fish and have so far collected 30 tonnes

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Haikou City Board of Marine and Fisheries say that they are investigating the cause of the animals' death further

Mass fish deaths can be naturally occurring. We experienced a sardine mass death a few years ago when a massive school got stuck in the harbor, sucked all the oxygen up and died. The area reeked for a few days but no clean up was necessary as the seabirds took care of that promptly. It was a feeding frenzy. Of course, after that, everything was covered in seabird poop.

[GeneChing]

A 'black and smelly' job: the search for China's most polluted rivers (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/22/black-smelly-citizens-clean-chinas-polluted-rivers?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1)
A Chinese government campaign asks the public to hunt down polluted waterways that can then be mapped and cleaned up

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Shi Dianshou holds his nose on the banks of Beijing’s putrid River of Happiness. He is taking part in the government’s ‘black and smelly river’ campaign. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

Tom Phillips in Beijing
Tuesday 21 June 2016 23.06 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 22 June 2016 17.00 EDT

One sunny morning, Shi Dianshou sets off for China’s River of Happiness.

“It’s not very happy right now,” the 24-year-old environmentalist admits as he drives north from Beijing to inspect the poetically named waterway.

Driving 26 miles (42km) out of town, Shi’s car pulls up beside a putrid, rubbish-strewn creek. A black sofa pokes up from its murky waters; a landfill decorates its western bank; and beside another heap of refuse, a stray bra hangs lazily from the branch of a tree, lending a comic touch to the bleak scene.

“I’ve seen this kind of river so many times,” complains Shi, pacing along the sewage-scented canal to evaluate the grime. “It makes me feel bad. I’m not happy about it.”

Shi is one of hundreds of Chinese citizens fanning out across the country in search of what the government has labelled “black and smelly rivers”.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/eead56d77999b54d0e706ff5dd51115cefd12a08/0_177_3264_1958/master/3264.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&
The severely polluted River of Happiness in northern Beijing, China. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

As part of the “hei chou he” (“black and smelly river”) initiative, China’s environment ministry is asking members of the public to help it hunt down severely polluted waterways that can then be catalogued and, hopefully, cleaned up.

Volunteers can post the locations and images of such waterways on a public WeChat account operated by the ministry.

Since the project started in February, citizens have used smartphones to identify and log more than 1,300 locations. They have been added to a pre-existing blacklist of more than 1,850 polluted waterways, says Shi, who works at the Beijing NGO Environmentalists in Action.

Shi, who has so far denounced five such rivers, says he hopes his work puts pressure on authorities and draws attention to toxic waterways they do not know about.

“We think many black and smelly rivers have yet to be discovered,” the activist says during a 6km trek along the River of Happiness or Xing Fu river. “We want to get those ones on the list so they can deal with those rivers too.”

Decades of unbridled industrialisation and urbanisation mean China has no shortage of black and smelly rivers.

In 2012, a senior official from the ministry of water resources admitted 40% of waterways were seriously polluted while 20% were absolutely toxic.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/28ab79634e15de8ed26b8d9e343c8d433edeb354/0_192_3264_1958/master/3264.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&
The severely polluted River of Happiness in northern Beijing, China. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

Even so, activists have expressed hope that the current environment minister, Chen Jining, is at least trying to clean up the mess.

Chen, an academic who studied at Imperial College London during the 1990s, took office early last year vowing to confront an environmental crisis that was “unprecedented in human history”.

Within months Beijing had unveiled a major anti-water pollution initiative – the so-called “10-point water plan” – that it called the strictest in Chinese history.

The “black and smelly” project is one part of that push to detoxify Chinese waters.

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Shi Dianshou and Luo Mengxiang visit the severely polluted River of Happiness. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

Environmentalists have praised the scheme as the first time the government has enlisted ordinary citizens to help fight its war on pollution.

“I’m really happy to see the government calling on the people to take part in this activity,” says Deng Fei, a journalist and environmental activist who has compiled an online map of China’s pollution-stricken “cancer villages”.

Deng says he started a similar project himself in 2013 – calling on internet users to help identify China’s 10 foulest waterways – but gave up after two fellow activists were detained by police.

Deng cautions that the complex and systemic problems responsible for water pollution will not be solved overnight. “Just because we have the information, it doesn’t mean we can solve the problem straight away,” he says. “But this is the first step and I believe that as long as the government is determined to solve the problem then we will see the second and third steps.”

A morning spent along the banks of the excrement-filled River of Happiness highlights the scale of the task.

“We’ve reported the situation to the environmental protection department but nobody comes,” complains Xing Wenhua, a 56-year-old villager, as he picks spring onions from an allotment near one riverside fly-tip.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/34df31a051ac3047fd1946ba516fc5b53346a279/0_270_3264_1958/master/3264.jpg
Xing Wenhua, a 56-year-old farmer who lives along the River of Happiness in northern Beijing, China. He says environmental officials have ignored the contamination of its waters. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

Xing jokes that the stench of effluent is so foul it had caused all his hair to fall out.

“I smell it every day and it stops my hair from growing! It’s so smelly!” laughs the bald farmer, who says the river’s downhill slide began after China’s economic opening started in the late 1970s.

“How nice it would be if the river and the air were clean,” adds Xing, as he tends to his vegetables. “We could drink the water when I was young. We’d go down there with a bucket to collect it from the river,” he reminisces.

Asked what would happen if you drink the water these days, Xing lets out a loud guffaw.

“What sort of a silly question is that?” the farmer bellows. “This water stinks. And you ask me if you could drink it? Do you think Chinese people are foolish? Are we all fools?”

Additional reporting by Christy Yao

I keep hearing the song 'Black Muddy River' playing out in my head when I read this.

[GeneChing]

Air pollution isn’t just making China sick, it’s making the country’s cities unbearably hot (http://qz.com/764121/air-pollution-in-china-is-making-cities-hotter/)
Haze air pollution in Shanghai is making China's cities even hotter than they already are, researchers say.

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/shanghai-air-pollution.jpg?w=3200
Where there's smoke. (Reuters/Aly Song)

WRITTEN BY Mun Keat Looi
OBSESSION
China's Transition
5 hours ago

Here’s another way China’s notorious air pollution is making citizens’ lives uncomfortable—it’s making the country’s cities hotter.
Researchers have found evidence that the pollution engulfing China’s cities enhances the warming effect of cityscapes, raising the temperature by one degree Celsius. Writing in Nature Communications, they say it’s not the bigger cities that suffer the most, but those with the worst of a certain type of air pollution.
Cities tend to be hotter than countryside areas because of the Urban Heat Island effect—the density of buildings and the materials they are built out of absorb heat and radiation from the sun extremely well, but don’t readily release it at night, keeping the area warmer for longer.
Meanwhile, China’s cities are often covered in a haze, as the researchers call it, that comes from the vehicles, factories, and coal-fired power plants that have driven China’s industrial development, which in turns has triggered a mass migration of citizens from rural areas into cities in search of work. The population regularly manifests as a suffocating smog that can engulf major cities for days.
Scientists have long suspected pollution exacerbates the Urban Heat Island, said Xuhui Lee, a professor at the Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, in a press release. The new finding, based on satellite data, is the first direct evidence that China’s infamous pollution problems are compounding the effect.
But not all pollution is created equal. Fine pollution particles, such as those in the 2.5 PM (particulate matter) range that are normally blamed for damaging health can actually be a protector when it comes to city heat. On the one hand, they cause asthma and penetrate the blood stream and internal organs, raising the risk of cancer and heart disease. On the other hand, those same sized particles actually block sunlight, which can help cool city surfaces.
Larger aerosol particles, such as those generated from road dust, coal burning, cooking stoves and sand—particularly a problem in cities in China’s northwest that are near to the Gobi and Taklimakan deserts—absorb and radiate heat while also being bad for health. The dust carried over from the deserts, combined with industrial pollution, mean these cities suffer the most from a thicker haze and a larger heating effect, compared to the bigger coastal cities. Hami City, population 450,000, has an Urban Heat Island effect three times worse than Shanghai, which has 14 million residents.
Lee says it shows how tackling China’s air pollution problems can benefit health in two very different ways. “Cleaning up has a co-benefit,” said Lee, “It helps improve human health, but it also helps to cool the local climate.”

Chinese metropolises were always hot and smoggy when I went. It was hellish. I hear it's gotten worse.

[GeneChing]

So wrong. What did they expect to achieve through this?


That's not how you tackle pollution! Chinese officials detained for 'stuffing cotton wool in monitors' to doctor air quality data (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3870612/Chinese-environmental-officials-caught-stuffing-cotton-wool-monitor-doctor-air-quality-data.html?ITO=applenews)

It was reported on October 21 that the officials had been questioned
It's alleged that they tampered with the results of air quality ratings
China is about to head into its worst season for pollution quality

By SOPHIE WILLIAMS FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 07:22 EST, 25 October 2016 | UPDATED: 08:52 EST, 25 October 2016

Three environmental officials in China have been detained after they were caught putting cotton wool in air quality sampling equipment to tamper with the results, according to Chinese media.
Media reports on October 21 claimed that the officials in the northern city of Xi'an had doctored the data by using both cotton wool and altering the readings on computers.
In 2015, a study by Berkeley Earth found that polluted air in China was linked to 1.6 million deaths a year.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/10/25/12/39B26A1900000578-0-image-a-62_1477395247769.jpg
Darkness: During the winter months smog completely engulfs Chinese cities

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/10/25/12/39B26B3300000578-0-image-a-61_1477395190571.jpg
Xi'an, located in northwest China often has bad smog in the winter months

According to People's Daily Online , the three officials in China's Shaanxi province are being questioned by police.
The report claimed that they had put cotton wool in equipment to make the sample appear to be less polluted.
There is a lot of pressure for these officials to meet strict air quality targets.
Huashang Daily, the official newspaper of Shaanxi, reported that the head official at the centre in Xi'an may have been under extreme pressure to meet the target, driving him to doctor the results.
The result of the air quality rating is sent to the national environmental monitoring centre where analysts examine the results from across the country.
According to reports, surveillance footage at the monitoring centre had also been tampered with.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/10/25/12/39B26B4300000578-0-image-a-63_1477395641777.jpg
The officials had reportedly tampered with the air quality rating in Xi'an (File photo)

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/10/25/12/39B26A8600000578-0-image-a-64_1477395747720.jpg
During the winter the smog in Xi'an can leave some people stuck at home

In 2014, the government announced its war on pollution.
During the opening of the annual meeting of Parliament, Premier Li Keqiang said the government would be tackling the issue which has been worrying the public.
Li Keqiang said that the government would focus first on reducing hazardous particles PM 2.5 and PM 10 which are found in smoggy air and are harmful to your lungs.
Winter marks the peak of smog season in China.

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj9fhm_OqNI

[GeneChing]

Slow news day for this forum - election is dominating everything today (and rightly so). :rolleyes:


Climate change challenges authoritarian China: experts (https://news-us.xfoor.club/2016/11/07/climate-change-challenges-authoritarian-china-experts/)

https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/7o88A05B7am0w9aa_3dGiw--/aD02ODI7dz0xMDI0O3NtPTE7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/Part-HKG-Hkg10237962-1-1-0.jpg

Shanghai – The gleaming towers of Shanghai belie the Chinese commercial hub’s vulnerability to climate change, and the city is spending billions to try to protect itself, but experts say the country’s authoritarian system is a hidden weakness.

According to a report last year by Climate Central, a US-based research group, the low-lying megacity is, in population terms, the world’s most at risk from rising sea levels.

A two degree Celsius increase in global temperatures would inundate land currently lived on by 11.6 million people, it said — by far the world’s highest. A 4 C rise would see that leap to 22.4 million.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lists Shanghai among the cities in Asia expected to be most vulnerable to coastal flooding by the 2070s.

It is already scrambling to fortify itself against increased rainfall city officials say is outstripping current defences.

“In the past two years we have often seen more than 100 millimetres of rainfall within a single hour, but our city only has the capacity to deal with 36 millimetres,” Zhang Zhenyu, the deputy director of the Shanghai Flood Control Headquarters told AFP, as staff pored over weather data.

“Especially this year with global warming, Shanghai’s weather has seen a dramatic change.”

Work will begin this year on a 40 billion yuan underground tunnel beneath Shanghai’s Suzhou Creek to manage excess rainfall, and 135 kilometres of a more than 500 kilometre long sea wall are to be reinforced.

– Field of vision –

The environment has become an increasingly important political issue in China, swathes of which are regularly blanketed by choking pollution, causing widespread public anger.

On Shanghai’s Huangpu river, residents relax on sunny mornings among the tall reeds and still waters of a wetland park built on a former industrial site to defend against floods and clean the polluted river.

But it is only a small section of the waterfront and experts point to an overlooked climate change vulnerability – China’s Communist-controlled political system.

It can enable authorities to put initiatives into effect on a huge scale once they have been decided on, such as its high-speed rail network, the world’s largest.

But officials’ promotion prospects have long been linked to economic growth in their areas, creating “dangerous short-termism” in decision making, according to Cleo Paskal, an energy, environment and resources specialist at British think-tank Chatham House.

As an example, she cited giving permission for toxic chemical containment pools to be built next to areas of high population density along a vulnerable coast.

“Over the long term, especially with environmental change, that is clearly a massive risk, but for the promotion potential of the decision makers concerned, the system registers it as ‘growth’,” she said.

Censorship is another issue, said Li Yifei, assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University Shanghai, with environmental research deemed too sensitive risking being banned from publication, and made accessible only to government officials rather than other researchers.

Given the city’s wealth, Shanghai’s Communist leaders can deploy huge sums in flood engineering projects, he said, but institutionalised blind spots meant officials focussed on visible threats such as flooding, which could cause public anger and unrest.

More imperceptible problems such as biodiversity risked being ignored, Li said.

“What’s important to think about is climate change is a problem that affects the entire society, it affects a lot of sectors and certainly way more than levee repairs and drainage,” he said.

“It doesn’t enter into the field of vision of the authoritarian structure and because of that these issues are not being properly addressed.”

– Most exposed –

Defenders see the Communist authorities’ desire to ensure social stability as motivating them to try to mitigate natural disasters.

“If thousands of ordinary households are flooded and newspapers and television are all at the scene making noise, then the government will face considerable pressure,” said Dai Xingyi, professor of environmental science at Fudan University and a member of the ruling party.

But rules on foreign NGOs in China contributed to Shanghai ranking worse than Dhaka in a 2012 study of nine cities’ vulnerability to flooding published in the journal Natural Hazards.

Restrictions have since tightened further with a law passed earlier this year giving police wide-ranging powers over foreign charities and banning them from fundraising and recruitment in the country.

Stefania Balica, a flood management researcher and engineer who co-authored the 2012 study, said that the skyscrapers of Pudong were “very protected and the dykes are very high, because it’s the financial district”.

But those who would die in the event of natural disaster, she said, were “the most exposed people” living along the coast.

[GeneChing]

It's beginning to look a lot like Xmas (http://www.martialartsmart.com/gift-ideas.html) (2016)


Beijing issues red alert for severely high air pollution due to incoming smog (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/beijing-city-air-pollution-red-alert-incoming-smog-china-capital-a7476496.html)
Phenomenon blamed on accumulation of toxic emissions from the city and surrounding areas, including Tianjin city and Hebei
Christian Shepherd 6 hours ago
The Independent Online

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/article_large/public/thumbnails/image/2016/12/15/09/china-smog.jpg
Industrial pollution remains a persistent problem in China's cities Stringer/Reuters

Beijing city government has issued a red alert for severely high levels of air pollution in the city for three days from December 17 to 21, according to a post on the Beijing environmental protection bureau's official Weibo account.

The incoming smog was due to an accumulation of air pollution in Beijing and surrounding areas, including Tianjin city and Hebei, Shandong and Hunan provinces, the post said, citing forecasts from the China Environmental Monitoring Center.

A colour-graded warning system of alerts was introduced in China's capital city last year as part of the government vow to crackdown on environmental degradation following decades of unbridled economic growth.

People told to stay indoors as air pollution in Beijing reaches hazardous levels

Beijing's first ever red alert was issued in December last year, temporarily closing schools and halting construction in the city.

The government has since been tweaking the system, raising in February the threshold of issuance to a higher average daily air quality index reading.

Reuters

[GeneChing]

Good thing we have the EPA in the USA....:rolleyes:


Mon Dec 19, 2016 | 10:32pm EST
Chinese turn to gallows humor and superheroes as they hunker down in smog (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-humour-idUSKBN1490AU)

http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20161220&t=2&i=1166082785&w=780&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=LYNXMPECBJ059
People wearing masks cycle past Tiananmen Gate during the smog after a red alert was issued for heavy air pollution in Beijing, China, December 20, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Lee

A Beijing driver calls a radio station in a panic. The smog is so thick he's just shot through five red lights because he couldn't see properly and wants to know what to do.

"It's fine, the smog is so bad nobody could see your license plate," the host reassures him, in a joke circulating on Chinese social media sites.

As large parts of northern China suffer under thick air pollution, Chinese people are taking to the internet with gallows humor to cope with the thick blanket of smog.

Restrictions on daily life, like implementing an odd-even license plate system to halve the number of cars on the road, have been a particular focus.

In another joke, U.S. President Barack Obama angrily throws an intelligence report on the table, wanting to know what sort of advanced weapons system could cause Beijing to vanish from satellite surveillance.

He asks a collection of superheroes, including Iron Man, Batman and the Hulk, what to do and who can go there, but they all hang their heads in shame.

"Optimus Prime can do it! He doesn't need to breathe," pipes up Wolverine, recommending the robot who can turn into a truck in the Hollywood movie Transformers, which is wildly popular in China.

But Optimus Prime quietly answers: "My license plate is restricted today", referring to the odd-even system.

While most jokes could not be judged politically sensitive, a few offer indirect criticism of perceived government inaction.

One joke lists ways to deal with the pollution.

"Individual therapy: put a mask on. Family therapy: buy health insurance. If you have money and the time: go on holiday. If you've no class: emigrate. National therapy: wait for the wind."

(Reporting by Gao Liangping and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Paul Tait)

[GeneChing]

We could bring jobs back to America by selling masks to China.


China's smog is so bad right now, masks and filters are starting to sell out (http://www.businessinsider.com/r-china-smog-triggers-demand-for-masks-filters-but-hobbles-deliveries-2016-12)
Reuters
Cate Cadell, Reuters

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/585bdee25124c96e4a423cf7-450-300/china-smog-triggers-demand-for-masks-filters-but-hobbles-deliveries.jpg
A man wearing a respiratory protection mask walks toward an office building during the smog after a red alert was issued for heavy air pollution in Beijing's central business district, China, December 21, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Lee

BEIJING (Reuters) - Near-record pollution levels in parts of China this week proved a two-edged sword for the country's e-commerce titans: orders poured in for anti-smog products, but transport restrictions meant it was a challenge to get these delivered.

Up to 50 million orders in north China alone face delivery delays due to grounded planes, closed highways and traffic bans, a spokeswoman for Alibaba Holding Group Ltd told Reuters, citing affiliate Cainiao Network Technology Co Ltd, which oversees China's largest logistics firms.

Online shoppers splurged on masks, filters and other anti-pollution gadgets, with e-commerce firms and brands reporting record demand in response to 'red alert' warnings in 24 cities by mid-week.

"In one day of red alert you'll probably do a month's sales," said Liam Bates, founder of Beijing-based Origins Technology Ltd, which makes air pollution monitors and air filters.

"But of course no one knows when the pollution will be really, really crazy, so it makes logistics a bit of a nightmare."


A consortium of delivery firms under Cainiao Logistics includes ZTO Express Inc, Shanghai YTO Express (Logistics) Co, Shanghai STO Express Co and Yunda Ltd - all of which posted delay warnings on their websites this week.

The red alert is the top warning in a four-tier system that triggers a series of regulations, including the closure of schools, factories and offices, and a blanket ban on up to half the vehicles in affected cities. The system was introduced in 2014 as part of a national effort to reconcile China's industrial engine with growing pressure from health groups.

The alerts in two dozen cities this week told citizens to stay indoors as air quality index (AQI) readings topped the maximum hazardous limit determined by the World Health Organization, and shrouded northeast China in thick smog.

A spokesman for JD.com, China's second-largest e-commerce platform, said orders peaked this week as consumers opted to stay at home. The number of pollution masks sold on the platform during the red alert more than trebled from last week, and sales of air filters rose 50 percent.

"Purchasing does happen in spikes around high pollution days", said Ben Cavender, a Shanghai-based retail analyst at China Market Research Group. "[Consumers] tend to make their actual purchases when they get the visual reminder of stepping outside and realizing they can't see."

According to Baidu, China's top search engine, searches including the term for 'smog' broke previous records on Monday.

Sold Out
It's the same consumer concern that has driven a surge in connected gadgets and consumables in the Chinese market, many of which see record sales during red alert events.

"The volume of people clicking our ads is about 30 times higher during smog periods," said a brand director at Beijing Public Technology Co, who gave only his family name of Liu.

He said the company, which makes ionic air cleaning devices for indoor use that can be worn as badges or necklaces, had to initiate an emergency stock transfer program after inventory was entirely sold out on Tuesday.

Some merchants said sales spikes on red alert days suggests people don't fully understand the year-round dangers of air pollution.

"There's still this issue in China that when there are alerts or the air gets really, really bad then everyone freaks out, but the other 90 percent of the time only a small percentage of people care," said Bates at Origins Technology.

As pollution levels eased slightly on Thursday, and some red alerts were canceled, some consumers took to social media to complain about the logistics delays.

"The face mask I ordered is delayed because of slow deliveries, and now the haze is vanishing," said one user on Weibo. "I guess I'll just save it for the next alert.

(Reporting by Cate Cadell; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

[boxerbilly]

Slow news day for this forum - election is dominating everything today (and rightly so). :rolleyes:


That is a beautiful can of worms.

post 79 pic.

[GeneChing]

CHINA ISSUES FIRST NATIONAL SMOG RED ALERT (http://www.newsweek.com/china-issues-first-national-smog-red-alert-538121?rx=us)
BY DAMIEN SHARKOV ON 1/3/17 AT 12:57 PM

Time-lapse of Beijing Being Engulfed By Smog

China has issued its first-ever national red alert for severe fog, after around two dozen of its cities across the country reported persistent air pollution problems.

While a handful of city authorities had raised the pollution warning to the highest level, Tuesday China’s national observatory did so, signalling a first-ever red alert for a phenomenon that has come to be known as the “airpocalypse.”

The new red alert has been raised in parts of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, as well as in the provinces of Henan, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu, state news agency Xinhua reported. A total of 24 cities are currently on red alert for smog, while an additional 21, including Beijing and Tianjin, are on the less-severe, orange alert.

http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/full/public/2017/01/03/smog-beijing.jpg
Smog is seen stretching across the city skyline during a hazy day in Beijing, China, January 1. It is a familiar scene across China as a national red alert for smog has just been issued.
STRINGER/REUTERS

According to the National Meteorological Center, the regions will experience thick fog, reducing visibility to less than 500 meters between Tuesday and Wednesday. In extreme cases, visibility could drop below 50 meters in some of these regions.

The authority has warned drivers to watch their speed and advised airports and ports to take the necessary safety measures.

Over the start of the New Year, Chinese cities have seen hundreds flight cancellations caused by the recent spread of smog.

China declared a “war on pollution” in 2014, in a bid to show that is combating the pollution effects from decades of industrialization. However, it has yet to find an effective solution to the problem.

Xinhua spun it differently. It's FOG. :rolleyes:


China issues first red alert for fog (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-01/03/c_135951814.htm)
Source: Xinhua | 2017-01-03 14:28:55 | Editor: huaxia

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-01/03/135951814_14834259156621n.jpg
A car runs in the fog-bound county seat of Runan, central China's Henan Province, Jan. 3, 2017. A red alert for fog in large parts of China was issued by the National Meteorological Center on Tuesday. (Xinhua/Sun Kai)

BEIJING, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- China's national observatory on Tuesday issued a red alert for fog in a number of northern and eastern regions, the first ever national red alert for fog.

From Tuesday to Wednesday, thick fog in parts of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region as well as provinces of Henan, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu will reduce visibility to less than 500 meters, the National Meteorological Center said.

In extreme cases visibility may fall below 50 meters in those regions, it added.

The center said drivers in affected regions should slow down to safe speeds, while airports, freeways and ports should take safety necessary measures.

The center also renewed an orange alert for smog in the same period in northern, eastern and central China, with smog continuing to blanket the regions since Friday.

China has a four-tier color-coded warning system for severe weather, with red being the most serious, followed by orange, yellow and blue.

[GeneChing]

Everything I read about PRC's airpocalypse is terrifying. It was harsh when I used to go there over a decade ago. Now it sounds absolutely horrifying.


CHINA’S BULLET TRAINS TURN BROWN AS SMOG CRISIS INTENSIFIES (http://www.rumournews.in/world/39027/chinas-bullet-trains-turn-brown-as-smog-crisis-intensifies/)
By Rumour Team - January 5, 20175

http://i1.wp.com/rumournews.in/uploads/2017/01/Chinas-Bullet-Trains-Turn-Brown-As-Smog-Crisis-Intensifies.jpg

China’s national observatory today renewed alerts for air pollution and fog across the country as the gleaming white bullet trains turned dark brown while travelling in pollution-hit areas, major expressways closed and over flights getting cancelled. Photos of the trains with brown stains went viral and even flashed in the official media websites as thick smog shrouded Beijing and 71 cities for the past five days.

The national observatory renewed alerts for air pollution and fog for some areas in northern, eastern and central China, including Beijing.

Heavy smog will persist in parts of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei, Jiangxi and Hunan till tomorrow the National Meteorological Centre (NMC), which renewed an orange alert for those areas said.

The NMC also renewed a red alert for fog in a number of northern, eastern and central regions.

From Wednesday morning to Thursday morning, thick fog in parts of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shanxi will reduce visibility to less than 200 meters, it said.

In extreme cases, visibility may fall below 50 metres in those regions, it added.

China has a four-tier colour-coded warning system for severe weather, with red being the most serious, followed by orange, yellow and blue.

Several expressways in Beijing — including sections linking the capital with Harbin in the northeast, Shanghai in the east, and neighbouring Tianjin Municipality — were closed from the early hours today, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Beijing Nanyuan Airport had cancelled 46 flights. In central China’s Henan Province, low visibility led to traffic restrictions on 12 expressways.

The province also ordered all kindergartens and primary schools to close for the day.

The neighbouring province of Shandong upgraded its alert for heavy fog from orange to red Wednesday morning, and as of noon more than 155 flights from its capital Jinan had been delayed, cancelled or diverted.

Many regions have experienced heavy smog since last Friday, and it looks set to persist for the remainder of the week.

Data from Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center showed that the density of PM 2.5, particulate matter associated with hazardous smog, stood at 391 micrograms per cubic meter at noon in the city proper, indicating that the air is heavily polluted.

Many Chinese cities have suffered from frequent winter smog in recent years, triggering widespread public concern.

The central government has stepped up efforts to cut outdated production capacity and has dispatched inspection teams to provincial regions to supervise environmental measures at key industrial enterprises.

[GeneChing]

Chinese medicine expert says 'anti-smog' teas ineffective
11 January 2017

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/974F/production/_93353783_c8f8d612-7523-4f50-8e17-18a6cf320cdd.jpg
TAOBAO
This "anti-smog" tea sold on Taobao promises to "boost lungs and moisten throats"

As parts of China continue to be engulfed by choking smog, many are turning to traditional Chinese medicine to combat the pollution's effect on their health.
One practice that has gained popularity is drinking "anti-smog" tea, which some believe can "clean" their lungs.
But a leading Chinese medicine practitioner has sought to dispel this myth, saying it is ineffective.
"Anti-smog" teas have become more widely available in Chinese medicine shops, pharmacies and online sites as the smog in China has worsened over the last few years.
There are different recipes, but they generally are made up of Chinese herbs such as dried flowers and roots.
The practice stems from the Chinese medicinal belief that drinking certain concoctions can boost one's health and rid the body of impurities.
A 2015 report by Beijing Morning Post noted that several pharmacies in the capital were selling "lung-cleansing teas to combat smog".
On popular online marketplace Taobao, "anti-smog" teas can be bought for 20 yuan (£2.20, $2.90) per packet and one listing claims that its combination of seven ingredients including dried chrysanthemums and honeysuckle can "boost lungs and moisten throats", and "combat the smog".

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/10C7F/production/_93353786_796b8282-247b-4436-8d4f-07261b0074eb.jpg
AP
Beijing has issued several pollution alerts since the smog began this winter

But in a recent report by state broadcaster CCTV, Liu Quanqing, president of the Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said such teas were "unreliable".
He noted, that the digestive and respiratory systems were separate, and that many teas contained ingredients which "may cause health problems if taken for a long time."
What would help instead, Mr Liu added, was maintaining a healthy diet and boosting one's immune system.
The same report also quoted officials from China's communicable disease centre as saying that using air purifiers and wearing masks were more effective in combating the smog.
'Delicious mist and haze'
The heavy pollution has become an annual occurrence during winter, affecting the north and eastern parts of China the most.
This year's smog has prompted school closures and warnings for residents to stay indoors, and triggered widespread health concerns.
One Shanghai surgeon's poem linking the smog to lung cancer recently went viral on social media.
The poem, which was originally written in English before it was translated into Chinese, describes a lung condition that is "nourished on the delicious mist and haze". That line has stirred controversy as authorities have sought to downplay the smog's health consequences.
But the surgeon, Zhao Xiaogang, told Global Times that he wanted to make the point that "the intense rise in lung cancer (in China)... is intimately related to smog".
The government has also tried to censor discussion and block protests, and municipal authorities in Beijing are even contemplating reclassifying smog.

Reporting by the BBC's Tessa Wong

I didn't even know this was a thing, but I should've assumed. It would be grand it if it worked. :rolleyes:

[GeneChing]

Heck I'd go to Antarctica just to see it before it melts away. :eek:

My cousins went. They said they met a lot of really well traveled people there because it's one of those 'last places on earth' destinations.


Chinese tourists seek ‘lung cleansing’ trips to Antarctica and Iceland as smog worsens (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/china/articles/chinese-tourists-seek-lung-cleansing-trips-with-growing-air-pollution-smog-in-china/)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/2017/January/smog-tiananmen-square-guard-large.jpg
Tiananmen Square: Residents in Beijing wear masks to protect themselves from the air pollution CREDIT: GETTY
Soo Kim, travel writer
17 JANUARY 2017 • 2:46PM

The growing issue of air pollution in China has caused several of its residents to plan “smog escapes” in search of clean air in far-flung places such as Iceland and Antarctica.

Online searches for keywords including “smog escape”, “lung cleansing” and “forests” were found to have tripled in the midst of the country’s ongoing smog problem, according to the “Smog Escape Travel Ranking” survey by Ctrip, a travel search website based in Shanghai, Bloomberg reports.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/2017/January/smog-beijing-large.jpg
An elderly man walking through heavy smog at a the Temple of Heaven park in Beijing in December 2016 CREDIT: GETTY

The Seychelles, the Maldives and Iceland are among the destinations residents think will offer the freshest air, according to Ctrip, while Phuket in Thailand, Bali, Jeju Island in South Korea and the city of Sanya on Hainan Island in south-east China are among the most popular island getaway spots sought by Chinese tourists.

Heavy pollution levels have led 62 Chinese cities, including Beijing, to issue health alerts. Pollution was found to be at medium or higher levels in 186 cities, and 25 have been issued with red alerts – the highest warning level – by the country’s ministry of environmental protection.

While most of the pollution stretches from the south-west to the north-east of China, residents of the capital were found to be most keen for a smog escape, according to the report by Ctrip.

The recommended level of exposure to PM2.5 particles – ones that pose the greatest health risks – is no more than 25 micrograms per 24 hours, according to the World Health Organisation.

But the concentration of these particles was measured to be 475 micrograms per cubic metre around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square earlier this month.

Dozens of cities in China spend many winter days under a thick, grey haze, caused chiefly by thousands of coal-burning factories and a surplus of inefficient vehicles. Locals can be seen walking around the city wearing masks, while others remain in office buildings to avoid the toxic air.

Earlier this month, officials in Beijing announced it would be deploying a new environmental police force to help fight the war against smog, focusing on pollution from open-air barbecues, garbage incineration and the burning of wood and other biomass.

The city also said it would be closing 500 factories that have been a source of pollution, while 2,560 other companies would be forced to clean up their operations. High-polluting vehicles will also be restricted in the city from next month, the Beijing Daily reports.

“The root cause of the region’s smog problems, from a long-term perspective, is the unclean industrial and energy mix, which require big changes,” Chen Jining, the country’s minister of environmental protection told the Xinhua News Agency.

The ministry is reviewing emergency plans for the 20 cities in the country facing the highest amount of air pollution, the minister said.

The Beijing Tourism Development Commission also reported a 24 per cent decrease in visits to the city’s popular tourist sites, dropping to 1.84 million visitors between December 31 and January 2. But the cause for the decline is unclear and wasn’t specifically attributed to the city's air pollution problem.

[GeneChing]

As seen in Playboy. Which I read for the articles. ;)


These “Vertical Forests” Developed by Architects in China Will Soak Up Smog (http://www.playboy.com/articles/vertical-forests-china-smog)
By Joshua A Fruhlinger
February 8, 2017

https://images.playboy.com/playboy-digital/image/fetch/s--JG9AQYHi--/c_fit%2Ch_1280%2Cq_80%2Cw_720%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fimage s-origin.playboy.com%2Fogz4nxetbde6%2FSeMszS7DCCUmMA w08es8y%2F2b27f9356c6a4573c906a64b26b4d0c8%2Fmain. jpg

It’s no secret that China has an air pollution problem. It’s so bad that at the beginning of 2017, Beijing had to cancel dozens of flights at their main international airport due to smog created by the massive need for coal-fueled heat in the cold winter months.

They’re starting to do things about it, including investing in wind farms, solar plants and other environmentally friendly energy sources. But until those things become commonplace in the world’s most populous country, the smog will remain a huge issue.

But one of the more creative - and beautiful - concepts to help curb pollution in China is this “vertical forest” design that blankets tall buildings in verdant trees. The buildings, from Italian architecture firm Stefano Boeri Architetti, are planned for the Pukuo District of Nanjing. They will include 1,100 trees along with 2,500 plants that will cascade from external shelfs and terraces.

As for their environmental impact, the designers claim that the vertical forests will absorb 25 tons of carbon dioxide per year and will produce 60 kilograms of oxygen on a daily basis.

These aren’t just concepts, either. The firm says the buildings will be completed in 2018, and they hope to build something similar in Shanghai, Chongqing, Liuzhou, Shijazhuang and Guizhou. They’ll be pretty tall as well, standing at a towering 656 feet. These buildings will include commercial space, office space, a museum, an architecture school and a private rooftop club. There are also plans to include a Hyatt hotel in one of the towers.

This has already been seen on a much smaller residential scale in Veitnam, and we’re still pretty stoked about it.

[GeneChing]

...too bad they couldn't just invest in clean energy like America. Oh wait...:o


https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/gettyimages-631059828.jpg?w=1100&quality=85
Pedestrians wearing masks walk on a road that is blanketed by heavy smog on Jan. 5, 2017, in Jinan, Shandong province, China VCG/Getty Images
CHINA

Chinese People Are Buying All Kinds of Desperate Remedies to Protect Themselves From Smog (http://time.com/4670174/china-smog-pollution-pmi-environment-facemasks-air-purifiers-taobao/)
Charlie Campbell / Beijing
Feb 13, 2017
Following a welcome burst of blue skies over Lunar New Year, chronic smog returned to northern China this week, prompting the wearing of face masks and the switching on of air purifiers as airborne particle levels soared to 10 times WHO safe levels.
The government said it was making efforts to deal with the choking haze, from slashing coal consumption in the capital Beijing by 30%, and the threat of legal action against the worst offending local authorities, to proposed cutbacks to the coal and steel industries. (Though Greenpeace claims the latter actually grew in capacity last year.)
But the enduring smog is good news for one section of society: peddlers of antipollution products. The range of prophylactics has grown enormously over the last few years, and ranges from the sensible — such as ever more sophisticated face masks and air purifiers — to the highly dubious, such as antismog herbal teas.
Boasting ingredients such as “polygonatum, kumquat, lily, red dates, chrysanthemum and rock candy,” the latter are claimed by manufacturers to "alleviate the harm to the human body of long-term inhalation of air pollution.” Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners are unimpressed, though; Liu Quanqing, president of the Beijing Hospital of TCM, told China’s state media last month that such concoctions were "unreliable" and "may cause health problems if taken for a long time."

https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/gettyimages-631293764.jpg?w=560
Passengers walk in the smog at Zhengzhou East Railway Station on Jan. 9, 2017, in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China VCG/Getty Images

But it’s not just teas that have dubious efficacy. China’s online trading platform Taobao — the nation’s gargantuan equivalent of eBay and Amazon — is chock-full with bizarre antismog products. There are antismog windows and antismog trees. For $5,000 you can buy a truck-mounted antismog water cannon that drenches particles from the air. Conversely, there is also antismog incense, for those who literally want to fight fumes with fumes.
For skeptics, face masks and air purifiers remain the preferred choices, and China has made major strides with both.
There are masks with built-in fans, masks just for the nose, and even couples’ masks especially for Valentine's Day. For fashionistas, Beijing designer Wang Zhijun turns high-end sneakers into face masks; one was crafted from a pair of Kanye West–designed, limited edition Adidas Yeezy Boosts that were recently sold online for $10,000.
Air purifiers, meanwhile, are becoming cheaper and more efficient. Chinese tech firm Xiaomi leads the way with its Mi Air Purifier Pro, boasting a dual-fan, dual-motor system with "high-precision laser sensor."
“Air purifiers are made not just for smog,” company spokesman Li Zhuoqi tells TIME. “In fact, air purifiers also sell well in countries with generally good air quality as they can filter pollen, dust, airborne germs and eliminate odors.”
Xiaomi should know what it’s talking about. Late last month, global vice president Hugo Barra quit the Beijing-based firm to move back to California, saying that “the last few years of living in such a singular environment have taken a huge toll on my life and started affecting my health.”— With reporting by Yang Siqi / Sanya, China

[Jimbo]

Beijing is so polluted, I can't understand Jackie Chan leaving Hong Kong to make it his base of operations. Well, I'm sure it's business, as well as his popularity in HK took a hit for various reasons. In his position, I would have chosen elsewhere.

[GeneChing]

This study looks at 272 Chinese cities. :eek:

It's kind of an obvious or foregone conclusion. But I guess you gotta do these kinds of studies to 'prove' that pollution is bad. :rolleyes:


Chinese air pollution linked to respiratory and cardiovascular deaths (https://scienmag.com/chinese-air-pollution-linked-to-respiratory-and-cardiovascular-deaths/)
February 10, 2017
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https://scienmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/132651_web-1.jpg
Credit: ATS

Feb. 10, 2017–In the largest epidemiological study conducted in the developing world, researchers found that as exposures to fine particulate air pollution in 272 Chinese cities increase, so do deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

The researchers reported their results in "Fine Particulate Air Pollution and Daily Mortality: A Nationwide Analysis in 272 Chinese Cities," published online ahead of print in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

"Fine particulate [PM2.5] air pollution is one of the key public health concerns in developing countries including China, but the epidemiological evidence about its health effects is scarce," said senior study author Maigeng Zhou, PhD, deputy director of the National Center for Chronic and Non-communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. "A new monitoring network allowed us to conduct a nationwide study to evaluate short-term associations between PM2.5 and daily cause-specific mortality in China."

The researchers found: * The average annual exposure to PM2.5 in the Chinese cities was 56 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3)–well above the World Health Organization air quality guidelines of 10 μg/m3. * Each 10 μg/m3 increase in air pollution was associated with a 0.22 percent increase in mortality from all non-accident related causes. * Each 10 μg/m3 increase in air pollution was associated with a 0.29 percent increase in all respiratory mortality and a 0.38 percent increase in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) mortality. * Mortality was significantly higher among people age 75 and older and among people with lower levels of education. * The association between PM2.5 levels and mortality was stronger in cities with higher average annual temperatures.

The researchers speculate that differences in educational attainment may result in environmental health inequalities and access to health care that affect mortality. In warmer cities, the authors hypothesize residents may spend more time outdoors and open windows, increasing their exposure to PM2.5.

The researchers said their study suggests a weaker association between increases in PM2.5 and mortality than studies conducted in Europe and North America. They suggest a number of possible explanations for this difference, including that in most Chinese cities there was a plateauing of mortality at the highest levels of pollution and the components of PM2.5 pollution in China may be less toxic than the components in Europe and North America. Crustal dust from arid lands and construction make up more PM2.5 pollution in China than it does in Europe and North America.

In 2013 China began introducing PM2.5 monitoring in urban areas. The current study analyzed available data between 2013-15. For nearly half the cities in the study, there was only one year of PM2.5 data available, and the authors note that a limitation of their study is that it does not look at the cumulative effect of PM2.5 over many years.

"Our findings may be helpful to formulate public health policies and ambient air quality standards in developing countries to reduce the disease burden associated with PM2.5 air pollution," said study co-author Haidong Kan, MD, professor of public health at Fudan University in China. "Further massive investigations, especially looking at the long-term effect studies, are needed to confirm our results and to identify the most toxic components of PM2.5 in China."

###

"Study of #airpollution in #China finds increased respiratory and CVD deaths."

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The AJRCCM is a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Thoracic Society. The Journal takes pride in publishing the most innovative science and the highest quality reviews, practice guidelines and statements in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine. With an impact factor of 12.996, it is the highest ranked journal in pulmonology. Editor: Jadwiga Wedzicha, MD, professor of respiratory medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute (Royal Brompton Campus), Imperial College London, UK.

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[Jimbo]

Taipei was polluted, but nothing like those cities in China. I wonder if those freaky pollution levels are a big part of the reason there's been so many news stories out of China of people with bizarre growths/tumors.

[GeneChing]

The full article is available online if you follow the link.



RESEARCH ARTICLE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Arctic sea ice, Eurasia snow, and extreme winter haze in China (http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/3/e1602751)
Yufei Zou, Yuhang Wang*, Yuzhong Zhang and Ja-Ho Koo†

Science Advances 15 Mar 2017:
Vol. 3, no. 3, e1602751
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1602751

You are currently viewing the abstract. VIEW FULL TEXT (http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/3/e1602751.full)

Abstract
The East China Plains (ECP) region experienced the worst haze pollution on record for January in 2013. We show that the unprecedented haze event is due to the extremely poor ventilation conditions, which had not been seen in the preceding three decades. Statistical analysis suggests that the extremely poor ventilation conditions are linked to Arctic sea ice loss in the preceding autumn and extensive boreal snowfall in the earlier winter. We identify the regional circulation mode that leads to extremely poor ventilation over the ECP region. Climate model simulations indicate that boreal cryospheric forcing enhances the regional circulation mode of poor ventilation in the ECP region and provides conducive conditions for extreme haze such as that of 2013. Consequently, extreme haze events in winter will likely occur at a higher frequency in China as a result of the changing boreal cryosphere, posing difficult challenges for winter haze mitigation but providing a strong incentive for greenhouse gas emission reduction.

[boxerbilly]

Well, China has to eat too. They do that buy making good to sell to others. Clearly they have less issues with environmentalist then the US does. The burn a ton of coal to produce heat to be used to create steam to turn a turbine and on and on and lo. I give you lighting. Niagara Falls bypasses the whole coal stream deal.
But is coal bad ? Hell we planned on shutting down an entire industry because we don't want to be like China. Never mind we can improve the bad by products from its use. So could China but people there need to watch there tongues.

What happened most likely is PRIVLEDGED had invested in something say like fracking. But to move it ahead because omg we can make enough electricity you have to kill a methods that is established. Never mind you can do better and maybe even safer than fracking. Now that's about 200,000 coal specific jobs gone. But coal gives all the down line jobs WORK !

Guys. We are at a population level that is out of control You have to pick. Earth or Humans. I pick humans. I don't want to go back to horse and buggy days. But if we do does that mean we now have to heat our homes with COAL ? Like Merry old England did ?Ah lovely London town. See my point ? It dos not matter. We are f--ked either way. Now I think it will be a lot cheaper to improve the scrubbers on coal plants than say make everyone in our new horse and buddy era to buy their own to clean their heat source. Better add all the other burnables to the list too. That's what people miss. Kill the people or kill the planet. Im willing to do either as long as I live.

[boxerbilly]

I have a solution for cheap safe cars at least in America. So even our poor can have a reliable car that wont kill the rest of us. Lets go grab back all those right off lease cars rotting in out of the way parking lots and fix and sell them at 5 grand a pop. Wait, screw them. Let them take to bus. That would just kill us faster. Whatever. Lets claim the cars and put them back in action and then the poor can help us kill the planet too. If we are going to let them live. Might as well let them have the best life of any poor in the world.

Also, how come it is seemingly Americas responsibility to house every other countries poor and criminal base and still provide clean air for the rest of the world ? Cant Mexico and China do its part ? Or we just going to keep jobbing out our jobs so we can say. WE LOVE THE PLANET but we are bankrupt and everyone is in prison eating each other now because there are no jobs and a frost hit and killed our crops but coal maybe could have saved them.

Yeah, let China worry about China and Mexico worry about Mexico and if they eat each other well they screwed up. How is that my problem or responsibility ? And send there bad people bad. We don't need them. They are causing us massive environment issues trying to stay warm. That work ? What will sell you ?

Okay how about this ? If you care so much for say Iran or Iwhatever. Why don't you go there and help them fix it ? WE TRIED. Don't want to try anymore. You go. They need your help fixing their country and providing for their people.

[boxerbilly]

I don't recall having this much trouble when we let the Vietnamese in. Yeah there was some dickhead that worried about it but those people did not bother anyone that I recall and integrated. Heck we still let them in and they still pretty much behave. Anyone point to any areas outside fo Vietnam where they caused maybe say mass rapes and burning of property ? Those people loved us and we loved them. Well not all of them but the ones that really wanted to be with us did. Sorry for the a-holes you meet here. We got our share. I have a particular fondness for the Vietnamese people and Laotians.

[boxerbilly]

So I was at the gas station buying smog juice when I asked the cashier a white dude what happened to that crying girl from the other night. This chick walked in all crying and hysterical. Liberal girl maybe 20. I kept asking the girl do you want me to call the cops ? She said no. Anyway someone called the cops and arrested her wonderful male liberal whatever for kicking her ass. GREAT ! Now today this other lady maybe 37 or so. White . Purple hair. School teacher. Beer buyer. Overheard my well the guy was a ****ing liberal. She got a little mad and this lead into a really great argument her being a Bernie fan. We have so much in common actually. Just our ways to get there differ. They are wrong, LOL.

Anyway she got off on the electric car and no more gas yet she buys gas for her rather large truck ? Talking alternative energy which I agree works but her the best we get is supplemental. She disagreed with the electric cars cost way more to fix. The better ones cost way more to buy so yeah, every person in America can get that Tesla tomorrow. NOT ! Then she went on about Regan killed the electric car back in whatever. Ever think the car got rejected by the public like the last inception ? That we all don't believe in your incorrect belief that is the solution and how are we going to generate electricity by the way? Almost not coal but that's back. NUKE sound good ? Good lord no. Oh solar so we can be sitting buy the side of the road on the days we went a foot over and well my flashlight is not generating those car panels up in NY like the rest of the Nation. Not against the technology but it aint just keep buying over priced batteries and replace like you would with a tv remote. With batts bought from Dollar Tree. But any way then she went off on POT legalization which the vast majority od Trump supporters also support. She did not agree with the throw the illegals out line and said you believe that is our problems. NO just a 113 billion dollar a year one that has a very simple solution. ByeBye.

Anyways, I really liked her. She hug me and thanked me for the debate. Then we walk out to our cars and we continued for another minute or so until I shook her hand goodbye. They aint all bad and they need more people like her leading their ideas. No violence and love at the end. Great lady.

So did Reagan kill that car back then ? http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1074042_ronald-reagan-father-of-the-modern-electric-car

Oh the girl and I managed to drive one customer out of the store. Some bearded dude. I spot any people messing with my car Im stepping out praying they advance.

Oops. She was also HOT and Im not generally attracted to white chicks. But her ability to give good argument maybe that turn me on ? I think she said she was married so....been there, done that. Don't recommend it fellows.

Oh we also talked water. Clean water. Like the last 4-5 Presidents fixed for us. Maybe not her but I wonder how many Liberals flush **** and pour bad stuff down the drains ? I never do. Ever think the public pollutes more than the companies ? Like the every house has a fuel filter deal. You going to trust the lazy ass public to scrub their coal burning ?
Or dump and play a video game ?

Man, I loved that chick. More like her please !

Also, before anyone thinks ALL WHITE AREA. Chris the black cashier was there the night of the beaten girl. He was not there tonight. A white lady was the other cashier tonight. We have lots of blacks here. Chris more or less does not care who was elected. He knows Im a die hard Trump supporter. He did not beat me up for it. I don't recommend he tries.

[GeneChing]

...you need some leg stockings and cosmetics to protect you from the toxic smog. :p


Fri Mar 17, 2017 | 6:48am EDT
Chinese firms offer pollution solutions with bottled air, hat filters, smog socks (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-idUSKBN16O18T?utm_source=applenews)

http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20170317&t=2&i=1176945430&w=780&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=LYNXMPED2G0NX
FILE PHOTO: An Air China passenger aircraft flies amid heavy smog over the suburb of Beijing, China, January 2, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo

Even as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledges to ensure that blue skies never become a luxury, a state-backed firm is doing brisk business selling 48 yuan ($6.95) cans of fresh air bottled in a forest in western China.

Each bottle is good for two minutes of uninterrupted use.

From air-filter necklaces to anti-smog stockings, Chinese companies are touting innovative - if not odd - products to consumers worried about the quality of the air that they breathe.

At the close of the annual meeting of parliament on Wednesday, Li said air pollution must be brought under control and blue skies should never be a luxury.

Smog alerts are common in northern China, especially during bitterly cold winters when pollution masks are frequently out of stock.

"We set up a factory in Ningdong Forest Park in Shaanxi province and compress air directly into the bottle," said Zhai Wenjun, sales manager at Sanqin Forest Industry, which is backed by the local Taibai Forestry Bureau.

"Consumers will feel like they are breathing in the forest," Zhai said.

Despite widespread criticism on China's Twitter-like microblog Weibo, Shaanxi media reported that the first batch of Qinling Forest Oxygen-Enriched Air had been sold out.

"The air reminds me of the forest," said a user on Taobao, China's most popular consumer-to-consumer online shopping website, adding that the price is "reasonable".

"As the price is a bit high, we suggest customers use it little by little," said Zhai.

Meanwhile, a firm backed by e-commerce giant JD.com (JD.O) is selling necklaces with micro air filters priced at 699 yuan.

Merchants on Taobao also sell leg stockings and cosmetics claiming to protect the skin from toxic smog, as well as a 298-yuan air-filter installed hat.

(Reporting by Muyu Xu and Ryan Woo; Editing by Nick Macfie)

[boxerbilly]

LOL. That may be a Chinese solution. From the looks of that pic. It is failing.

We can make coal burning fairly clean. So could China. But it would cut into their profits.

Now I understand the tactic. Job out to China where they a extremely lax on EPA like stuff. Once they can't breath we can bottle our clean American air and sell it to them at outrageous rates. This or die , SELLS !

[boxerbilly]

Ive seen LA areas almost that bad. If you remove the illegals it would lessen the load and they could breath again.

[boxerbilly]

10269
Ive seen LA areas almost that bad. If you remove the illegals it would lessen the load and they could breath again.


A 2015 pic of LA. Yeah, Californians know what they are doing. ?????

[boxerbilly]

Progressive Liberals and BAD SCIENCE. Those extra smog tests/checks on your cars are useless grabs at your cash. Remove the illegals. That will work far better than ruining your gas mileage.

[boxerbilly]

These numbers are extremely off but lets use them. Santa Ana is likely half illegal as far as just the Mexican population is concerned.

Now 1 million. Lets say a quarter have cars and that's probably undercutting hard too. So 250,000 cars no longer pumping out exhaust. Lighten the load.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-illegal-immigration-los-angeles-20170208-story.html

[boxerbilly]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2016/01/20/u-s-illegal-immigrant-population-falls-below-11-million-continuing-nearly-decade-long-decline-report-says/?utm_term=.32002d95bdd5


http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/former-mexico-ambassador-30/2015/08/18/id/670740/

[boxerbilly]

apply my don't leave it in the hands of lazy people to comply. It never works. What happens when you get pulled over with failed or expired tags ? TICKET. Problem solved. Not based on that photo above. And illegals are generally not going to show up for court. Bench warrant. If you catch them again. Fact is to many cars out there are on the roads and would never pass inspection. I don't fully give all that to Illegal cause but they are a large part of that cause. Why waste money on something like that ? Cheaper to buy illegal tags or rip them off another car. You guys still keep yours on your plates ? Ours are on the inside of our windshield. Removal destroys. What does getting caught with illegal tags get you. A ticket ? They will never follow stupid laws like that. Getting Americans too is hard enough.

[boxerbilly]

Now my idea TRUMPS this nonsense and it begins to work instantly. Non compliance is not a factor. Triple the cars off the road and probably more than that.
What is more is this will cause almost no effect to most Americans in California. Those with illegal relatives may cry. But you can always go to Mexico to visit. If your relative gets caught this time. They will never be allowed back inside the US. It is over . That's why the smart ones headed back. They know if they get busted here no chance of ever getting back in. What is more is if busted you about ruin it for any other family member in Mexico from ever getting in either. You don't have to believe me. I don't care.


http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/09/14/64666/officials-want-to-take-100-000-cars-off-los-angele/

edit- Further, this is part of the hidden dollars that never gets accounted for. 113 billion a year and that's a GUESS. Ive red 300 million is closer to fact. But I am kind I use lowest to middle numbers. Almost always when I do the math I grab the lowest numbers I can find and it exceeds the numbers told you and people take as truth.

133 billion a year my ass. What kind of damage is this exhaust causing California ? What extra costs must your legitimate public endure ? Illegals are not paying this. In fact they have kids and qualify for our social programs. WE PAY THEM. Has to stop !

[GeneChing]

This is even more of a reversal in context of my post this morning on the Made in China thread (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?66168-Made-in-China&p=1303178#post1303178).


https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/gettyimages-678484936.jpg?w=720&quality=85
A Chinese woman wears a mask to protect from particles blown in during a sandstorm as she walks in the street on May 4, 2017 in Beijing, China. Kevin Frayer—Getty Images
CHINA

Why an Unlikely Hero Like China Could End Up Leading the World in the Fight Against Climate Change (http://time.com/4800747/china-climate-change-paris-agreement-trump/)
Charlie Campbell / Beijing
May 31, 2017

Gazing through the smog at Beijing, where pollution regularly grounds flights, shutters schools and sends people gasping to hospitals, it’s hard to imagine China leading the fight against climate change. But that’s the role the world’s worst polluter may find itself in on Thursday afternoon, after a Rose Garden press conference from U.S. president Donald Trump regarding American adherence, or otherwise, to the Paris Climate Agreement.
According to senior White House aides, Trump is poised to take the world’s largest economy off the list of 195 signatories of that landmark deal. (The only other dissenting nations are Syria and Nicaragua, who, to be fair, didn't sign the accord because it didn't go far enough.) The U.S. president's election pledge to put “America First” could inflict appalling hardship on the world’s poorest people, according to environmentalists.
"Climate change is undeniable. Climate change is unstoppable,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was quoted as saying on the organization’s Twitter page in response to the news. “Climate solutions provide opportunities that are unmatchable."
The Paris Agreement was finally sealed in December 2015 after years of faltering negotiations. It aims to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2°C (3.6°F) by 2100. Those targets were always optimistic, of course, though now look impossible, especially given the chilling effect open American opposition may have on other nations’ resolve.
Picking up the baton is, unsurprisingly, the E.U. as well as, somewhat more surprisingly, China. A joint statement calling the Paris Climate Agreement "an imperative more important than ever" is expected at a meeting in Brussels on Friday. While European leaders’ green credentials are well established, China has historically shied away from tackling the issue, instead insisting that economic development takes precedence over environmental degradation. In doing so, Beijing says it is only following the example of Western nations embarking on their own industrial revolutions during of the 18th and 19th centuries.
That viewpoint has now shifted as Beijing seeks to take more of a leadership role on the world stage. When he became the first Chinese leader to address the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, President Xi Jinping said, “The Paris Agreement is a hard-won achievement which is in keeping with the underlying trend of global development. All signatories should stick to it instead of walking away from it as this is a responsibility we must assume for future generations.”
Fine words, but the fact remains that China is by far the world’s biggest carbon emmitter — the U.S. is number two — where “airpocolyses” may be responsible for one in three deaths. The leaching of chemicals into waterways means 80% of underground wells are unfit even for bathing across the world’s most populous nation. Can China walk the talk?
“In the short run, substantively it will be difficult,” says Prof. Nick Bisley, an East Asia expert at Australia’s La Trobe University. “But symbolically China's very well placed to take advantage of what looks like an America that’s essentially vacating the field.”
China reached a tipping point around 2013, when key polluting sectors such as coal, steel and cement were operating at full tilt to supply a booming real estate market. But that market has since slowed and emissions have followed suit. China’s concern over energy security compliments its focus on renewable sources, reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuel imports that could be held ransom to instability outside its borders. (At present, up to 80% of China’s energy needs pass through the vulnerable Malacca Strait chokepoint.)
Last year, China was the world’s largest renewable energy investor — amounting to $32 billion — and employs 40% of the sector’s global workforce. It will soon have the world’s largest solar farm in Qinghai province and the largest wind farm in Gansu. Five of the six largest solar manufacturing firms globally hail from China, where the cost of solar panels dropped 30% this year.
Ironically, given the basis of Trump’s pending Paris withdrawal, China looks at renewables as an employment creator rather than a drain. There are 3.5 million renewable energy jobs in China out of 8.1 million globally, compared to fewer than one million in the States. China’s National Energy Administration expects that new investment will create 13 million jobs in the sector by 2020.
“China has been leading, continues to lead today, and will continue to lead tomorrow,” Wu Changhua, Greater China director for the Climate Group, tells TIME. “The country is coming together to develop greener industries.”
Furthermore, China is better placed than the U.S. to instill green energy practices in the developing world. Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative — a trade and infrastructure network spanning the ancient Silk Road — also provides an opportunity to export green technology across Central Asia and Africa. The Beijing-based Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank — opposed by the U.S. though likely soon to boast 85 member nations — was founded in 2016 upon a promise to be “lean, clean and green.”
There are problems, of course. At home, an ambitious carbon trading system — twice the size of the European equivalent, in which companies are incentivized to upgrade with cleaner technologies and profit from selling carbon credits within emissions-capped industries — remains riddled with cooked books and falsified data. China’s top-down approach means electric cars and bikes are ubiquitous across its sprawling cities, though the heavily hitters with government links escape rigorous examination.
More critically, coal power still makes up two-thirds of China’s energy supply, contributing to 80% of CO2 emissions, and overcapacity in the industry means 21% of China’s wind power and 11% of its solar was wasted in the first half of 2016, according to the World Resources Institute. Domestic coal and oil consumption is falling, though that’s partly due to a slowing economy. Nevertheless, few believe this situation will reverse. “If you don’t have coal and you don’t have oil then your emissions boom story is over,” Li Shou, an East Asia researcher for Greenpeace, told a recent meeting at the Foreign Correspondent Club of China.
That said, tackling overcapacity in China’s leviathan state-owned enterprises — particularly, coal, concrete and steel — remains the greatest challenge to China’s green credentials. Much like in the U.S., there are powerful vested interests in the energy sectors that will resist government efforts to reform — not to mention the existential challenge that legions of unemployed coal and steel workers pose for the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.“Part of the problem is addressing the jobs issue,” adds Wu. “It’s a tough challenge but the political will is definitely there. It takes a lot of wisdom to get the right balance.”

[GeneChing]

At least PRC is taking steps...


A refreshing forecast: breathing ’70s quality air may be only 13 years away for China (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2103203/refreshing-forecast-breathing-70s-quality-air-may-be)
Study says cleaner energy could deliver air quality levels last seen decades ago
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 20 July, 2017, 8:02am
UPDATED : Thursday, 20 July, 2017, 8:02am
Stephen Chen

A paper published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday said China’s worst form of air pollution – known as PM2.5 – may have peaked a few years ago at an average of about 60 micrograms per cubic metre of air.
By 2030, as more people in rural areas moved into cities with access to cleaner, more efficient energy sources such as natural gas and electricity, and used less coal or hay for cooking and heating, the average PM2.5 level could be cut by nearly 5 micrograms, the study said.
That modest-seeming change is just substantial enough to bring air quality back to pre-1980 levels, when the nation had just started its economic boom, according to the researchers’ calculations.
The study’s lead scientist, Tao Shu of the college of urban and environmental sciences at Peking University, said that this model only factored in urbanisation, and that many other forces were driving further cuts in China’s pollution levels.
Other drivers included the government imposing heavier penalties on polluters, the adaptation of new production technologies that consumed less energy, and the widespread replacement of fossil fuels by alternative power sources such as wind, solar and nuclear plants, Tao said.
The construction site of China Zun, planned to be the tallest building in Beijing, is seen amid smog at sunset. Photo: Reuters
These measures had already led to a recent decline in the emission of pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a major cancer-causing chemical; sulphur dioxide, an acid-rain trigger; and nitricoxide, an important raw material for smog formation, according to data the research team collected from environmental monitoring stations across the country.
“China has a painful history of pollution, but the darkest days are behind us,” Tao said.
“We have strong evidence to support this conclusion. It makes us feel generally optimistic about the future.”
By 2030, more than 70 per cent of the people on the mainland will be living in cities, compared with less than 60 per cent at present, according to an estimate by Tao and his colleagues.
Calculating the health impact of urbanisation-related environmental improvements, the researchers found that nearly one million premature deaths could be prevented by people breathing cleaner air.
China’s situation might look familiar to older people living in Europe, according to Wang Jingfu, a professor of chemistry with a laboratory for green engineering and technology at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Wang, who was not involved in Tao’s research, said he believed the situation in China today was similar to that of Germany before the 1970s.
The country was in a period of severe environmental deterioration after going through decades of intensive economic development to rebuild after the second world war.
“The Germans had had enough of the pollution. The government implemented a series of measures to save the environment. By the 1990s, the situation was vastly different,” Wang said.
“This is also happening in China with results to be seen and felt in a decade or two. It is possible to cut pollution while maintaining economic growth with the use of new technology,” he said.
Tao said the scientists’ findings did not mean smog was no longer a worry. In megacities such as Beijing and Shanghai, residents would face slower improvements in air quality because large populations made it difficult to reduce certain pollutants.
“Clean air will not just sit there and wait for us,” Tao said. “We still have many years of hard struggle ahead.”

[GeneChing]

China is more than the canary in the coal mine. It's the Ouroboros wyrm circling the globe here.


Pollution claims 1.8 million lives in China, latest research says (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2116342/pollution-claims-18-million-lives-china-latest-research-says)
Contaminated air and water killed more than nine million people globally in 2015, mostly in poor countries, report says
PUBLISHED : Friday, 20 October, 2017, 8:57pm
UPDATED : Friday, 20 October, 2017, 11:30pm
Alice Yan

https://cdn4.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/980x551/public/images/methode/2017/10/20/3f645c10-b583-11e7-95c2-e7a557915c7a_1280x720_221019.JPG
About 1.8 million Chinese died as a result of environmental pollution in 2015, according to a new worldwide study.
Produced by a team of 40 scientists – including one from Renmin University in Beijing – the report said that in that one year alone, at least nine million deaths, or 16 per cent of the global total, were pollution-related. The number was more than four times that attributed to Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined.
Published on Thursday in the British medical journal The Lancet, and designed to raise public awareness of the perils of pollution, the report, titled Commission on Pollution and Health, claims to be the most comprehensive study of its kind to date.

https://cdn3.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2017/10/20/e43ebf36-b241-11e7-95c2-e7a557915c7a_972x_221019.JPG
People in Shandong, eastern China, wear face masks to protect against the smog. Photo: Reuters

“For decades, pollution and its harmful effects on people’s health, the environment and the planet have been neglected both by governments and the international development community,” it said.
The vast majority of pollution-related deaths – about 92 per cent – happened in poor or middle-income countries, with India topping the list with 2.5 million in the year studied, the report said.
The 1.8 million deaths reported for China was significantly higher than the 1.1 million estimated by the United States-based Health Effects Institute released earlier this year.
“Pollution is much more than an environmental challenge,” said Philip Landrigan, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the US who co-led the study.

https://cdn4.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2017/10/20/4d319cb8-ac5a-11e7-9cb1-5f6b75e2d8b2_972x_221019.JPG
Smog descends on road users in Shengfang, northern China’s Hebei province. Air pollution caused about 6.5 million deaths around the world in 2015, a study said. Photo: Reuters

“It is a profound and pervasive threat that affects many aspects of human health and well-being.”
In rapidly industrialising countries like India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Madagascar, pollution was responsible for up to a quarter of all deaths, the report said.
Between eight million and nine million people die in China every year – according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics – which means, based on the study’s data, that 20 to 22.5 per cent are linked to pollution.
Regardless of a nation’s prosperity, deaths from diseases caused by pollution were most prevalent among minorities and the marginalised.
The research said that pollution was the biggest cause of deaths around the world in 2015, followed by tobacco smoking, which claimed about 7.8 million lives. The three deadliest communicable diseases – Aids, malaria and tuberculosis – were responsible for a combined 2.2 million deaths in the year.

https://cdn3.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2017/10/20/146079fa-b587-11e7-95c2-e7a557915c7a_972x_221019.JPG
A man scoops dead fish from the surface of a polluted river in central China. Water pollution is a major health concern in many parts of the country. Photo: AFP

The deadliest form of pollution was contaminated air, which accounted for 6.5 million deaths, with tainted water claiming 1.8 million lives.
A study carried out last year by Nanjing University’s School of the Environment found that smog, a common phenomenon in the north of the country, was linked to almost a third of all deaths in China, or about the same number as smoking.
Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs, said that water pollution was a growing problem in many areas of China.
“They has been a spike in the incidence of diseases [caused by drinking polluted water] and especially cancer,” he said.
The new study estimated that the economic cost of pollution-related deaths at US$4.6 trillion a year, or about 6.2 per cent of global economic output.

[GeneChing]

Smog blankets Beijing, northern China, causes road closures around the country (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2117244/smog-blankets-beijing-northern-china-causes-road-closures-around)
Visibility falls to 50 metres in some parts of the capital as air pollution soars despite efforts to ensure blue skies during party congress
PUBLISHED : Friday, 27 October, 2017, 11:47am
UPDATED : Friday, 27 October, 2017, 11:31pm
Kinling Lo

https://cdn4.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/980x551/public/images/methode/2017/10/27/d5285714-bac5-11e7-affb-32c8d8b6484e_1280x720_184521.jpg
People wear face masks on a polluted day in Beijing. More than 1.8 million Chinese died from pollution-related illnesses in 2015, a new study has said. Photo: Reuters

China’s efforts to ensure blue skies for the Communist Party’s national congress failed as heavy smog blanketed Beijing throughout the week-long event and worsened as cadres headed back home.
An orange air pollution alert – the second highest on the four-tier scale – was issued for the capital on Friday morning.
The China Meteorological Administration said that in some parts of the capital, visibility was as low as 50 metres.
The administration said that as of 3pm in Beijing, the density of PM2.5 – particularly fine pollutants harmful to human health – was 186 micrograms per cubic metre, well above the World Health Organisation’s recommended safe level of 25.
Beijing-based website Aqicn.org said PM2.5 levels in the capital reached 277 micrograms per cubic metre in the mid-afternoon, making the air quality “very unhealthy”.
Air pollution suspected for sharp rise in China lung cancer rate
But the first day was marred by rain and followed by a yellow smog warning and then an orange alert on day three. Conditions then improved as the congress drew to an end on Tuesday, only to worsen again as President Xi Jinping introduced the top tier of the country’s leadership on Wednesday.
Weather forecasters said conditions were expected to improve over the weekend.
“With the cold air coming in [on Saturday] there will be an obvious improvement in Beijing’s air quality and visibility,” the administration said on its website, adding that “the blue sky and white clouds will return”.
In early September, the Ministry of Environmental Protection warned that the annual smog season had arrived earlier than in previous years. Beijing’s air pollution problems traditionally worsen with the arrival of the colder weather, as demand for heating soars across the city and coal-fired power plants ramp up their production.
China’s northeast was not the only region to be hit with smog on Friday. According to the meteorological office, air quality was so poor in some parts of Shanxi, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shaanxi, Henan, Sichuan and Chongqing, that several motorways had to be closed.
Xi, who tightened his grip on power at the congress, told the gathering that China would “continue implementing air pollution prevention measures and win the war on protecting the blue sky”.

We had a major smog alert because of the North Bay forest fires a few weeks ago. But it wasn't this bad. :(

[rett2]

Sulfur compounds

10417

Particulates <2.5 micrometres

10418

At time of this posting. Looks pretty nasty...:(

[GeneChing]

NOVEMBER 17, 2017 / 12:45 AM / 3 DAYS AGO
China faces waste hangover after Singles' Day buying binge (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singles-day-waste/china-faces-waste-hangover-after-singles-day-buying-binge-idUSKBN1DH0WO)
David Stanway
6 MIN READ

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s Singles’ Day online discount sales bonanza on Saturday saw bargain-hungry buyers spend over $38 billion, flooding the postal and courier businesses with around 331 million packages - and leaving an estimated 160,000 tonnes of packaging waste.

The annual Nov. 11 buying frenzy is a regular fillip for giant online retailers like Alibaba and JD.com, but the mountains of trash produced from just one day of conspicuous consumption have angered environmentalists.

“Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste,” said Nie Li, toxics campaigner at Greenpeace, which estimates this year’s orders will produce more than 160,000 tonnes of packaging waste, including plastic, cardboard and tape.

Total sales from Singles’ Day hit 254 billion yuan ($38.25 billion), with 1.38 billion orders placed, state media reported. Around a quarter of the total sales involved household electric devices or mobile phones.

China’s State Post Bureau (SPB) said postal and courier companies are having to deal with at least 331 million packages, up 31.5 percent from last year.

Greenpeace described the annual promotion as a “catastrophe for the environment” that not only creates waste, but leads to a surge in carbon emissions from manufacturing, packaging and shipping. In a report published last week, it estimated that total orders last year produced 52,400 tonnes of additional climate-warming carbon dioxide.

E-commerce firms have drawn up measures aimed at solving the problem, and aim to replace cardboard boxes with reusable plastic ones that courier companies can share. They have also experimented with biodegradable delivery bags and tape-free boxes, but Nie said the efforts were still not enough.

“China’s online retail giants have taken few real steps to reduce delivery packaging waste,” she said. “Ultimately, packaging that we throw out after one use is not a sustainable option.”

A spokesman for JD.com said it is “continually improving ways to better reduce waste and pollution” and, among other measures, aims to raise the proportion of biodegradable materials in its packaging materials to 80 percent by 2020.

Alibaba’s Cainiao logistics arm said in emailed comments that it had launched initiatives aimed at minimizing its environmental impact. “We are committed to work closely with different stakeholders to protect the environment and contribute to the sustainable development of the industry,” it said.

MOUNTAINS OF WASTE

China’s packaging waste problems are not confined to Singles’ Day.

Official data shows China’s courier firms delivered around 20 billion orders in 2015, using 8.27 billion plastic bags, 9.92 billion packing boxes and enough sticky tape to go around the globe more than 400 times.

Overall deliveries continue to surge, with the number of packages expected to hit 50 billion next year, up from 30 billion in 2016, according to forecasts by the SPB.

But even that’s only a small part of China’s mounting waste problem, with large sections of the country’s soil and water contaminated by untreated industrial, rural and household trash.

http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20171117&t=2&i=1210212872&r=LYNXMPEDAG0IX&w=940
A laborer works at a paper products recycling station in Shanghai, China November 17, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song

With China’s major cities producing around 2 billion tonnes of solid waste a year, they are already surrounded by circles of landfill known in Beijing as the “seventh ring road”.

China has also struggled to finance the infrastructure required to handle surging volumes of discarded white goods, consumer electronics and batteries.

Despite massive production volumes that have left the country dependent on imported raw materials, overall recycling rates in industries like steel, glass or textiles remain way behind their international counterparts.

On top of that, China has only just started to impose restrictions on imported waste, which stood at 47 million tonnes in 2015.

Recycling of foreign and domestic trash was traditionally handled by migrant workers, known as “scavengers”, who ripped apart discarded goods in back-street workshops.

But rising economic prosperity means fewer people seek to make a living recycling waste, and tougher environmental regulations have forced small-scale recyclers to close.

CONSUMER HABITS

As well as ordinary couriers, China’s many food delivery services are under pressure to reduce waste. The Chongqing Green Volunteer League, a local environmental group, said earlier this year it was taking legal action against some operators for failing to handle the problem.

Activists claimed just one online delivery platform used enough chopsticks every day to destroy the equivalent of 6,700 trees. They said the firms fail to inform customers or give them opportunities to choose greener options.

Hu Zhengyang, a director at the China Packaging Association, told Reuters that his own industry body had appealed to delivery businesses to use fewer materials, but he said it ultimately “required more attention from government and ordinary people.”

The SPB issued new guidelines to deal with the problem last year, urging delivery companies to eliminate substandard packaging products by the end of 2020, and to establish a proper recycling system.

Delegates from central China’s Henan province, who raised the issue of packaging waste at this year’s parliament, said courier firms should be punished for violating rules, and incentives are needed to encourage the use of recyclable materials, which often cost more.

“This is not going to be welcomed by courier companies or consumers, and it needs state support in areas like policy, financing and taxation,” they said.

Ultimately, said Greenpeace’s Nie, it needs a shift in consumers’ mind-set.

“If we really want to ‘green’ our buying habits, we need to consume less, re-use more and go back to repairing things that are broken,” she said.

Reporting by David Stanway and the Shanghai newsroom; Additional reporting by Cate Cadell in BEIJING; Editing by Ian Geoghegan


Single Day (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70558-China-s-Single-Day) & China's Pollution Problem (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67175-China-s-Pollution-problem).

[GeneChing]

...there is hope. There's always hope.


DECEMBER 29, 2017 / 4:17 AM / UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO
Beijing may be starting to win its battle against smog (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-beijing-insight/beijing-may-be-starting-to-win-its-battle-against-smog-idUSKBN1EN0ZJ)
Muyu Xu, Elias Glenn
7 MIN READ

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing may have turned a corner in its battle against the city’s notorious smog, according to Reuters calculations, and environmental consultants say the Chinese government deserves much of the credit for introducing tough anti-pollution measures.

http://s2.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20171229&t=2&i=1217965243&r=LYNXMPEDBS0MC&w=1280
FILE PHOTO: A traditional pavilion is seen amid smog in Beijing's Houhai area, China December 29, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee
The Chinese capital is set to record its biggest improvement in air quality in at least nine years, with a nearly 20 percent change for the better this year, based on average concentration levels of hazardous breathable particles known as PM2.5.

The dramatic change, which has occurred across North China, is partly because of favorable weather conditions in the past three months but it also shows that the government’s strong-arm tactics have had an impact.

The Reuters’ estimates show that average levels of the pollutants in the capital have fallen by about 35 percent from 2012 numbers, with nearly half the improvement this year.

“The improvement in air quality is due both to long-term efforts by the government and short-term efforts this winter,” said Anders Hove, a Beijing-based energy consultant. “After 2013, the air in summers got much cleaner, but winter had not shown much improvement. This year is the first winter improvement we’ve seen during this war on pollution.”

Government officials this week signaled they were confident they were starting to get on top of the problem.

“The autumn and winter period is the most challenging part of the air pollution campaign. However, with the intensive efforts all departments have made, we believe the challenge is being successfully overcome,” Liu Youbin, spokesman for the Ministry of Environmental Protection, told reporters on Thursday.

STILL A LONG WAY TO GO

But environmental experts say that while they are optimistic, it may be too early to celebrate.

“The turning point is here but we cannot rule out the possibility we can turn back,” said Ranping Song, developing country climate action manager for the World Resources Institute. “We need to be cautious about challenges and not relax now that there have been improvements. There are lots of issues to be solved.”

And while China has scored an initial victory over smog, it still has to reverse public opinion outside China on its air quality.

New York-based travel guidebook publisher Fodor’s advised tourists in mid-November in its ‘No List” for 2018 to shun Beijing until the city’s anti-pollution campaign had reduced the “overwhelming smog”. Fodor’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Beijing there is certainly plenty of room for further progress as average air quality is still significantly worse than the World Health Organization’s recommendations.

And the region still sees bouts of heavy smog. On Friday afternoon the U.S. embassy’s website said Beijing’s air was “very unhealthy” and the city issued a pollution alert on Thursday.

EMBASSY MONITORING

The Reuters calculations showing the improvement were based on average hourly readings of PM2.5 concentrations at the United States Embassy in Beijing from April 8, 2008 to Dec. 28, 2017. The data was compiled from figures from the U.S. embassy’s air monitoring website, as well as data provided by AirVisual, a Beijing company that analyses air quality data.

The data from the embassy, though not fully verified or validated, is the only set available for PM2.5 levels in the capital over that time period. AirVisual provided the hour-by-hour air pollution data from the embassy for recent months.

http://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20171229&t=2&i=1217965245&r=LYNXMPEDBS0MM&w=940
FILE PHOTO: Vehicles drive towards the Central Business District (CBD) amid heavy smog in Beijing, China, November 28, 2015. REUTERS/Jason Lee/Files

PM2.5 levels are the most closely monitored because they account for the majority of air pollutants in China and can be harmful to the body when breathed.

(For a graphic on average monthly PM2.5 concentration in Beijing, click tmsnrt.rs/2zLIo0R)

Beijing’s air was actually worse in the first nine months of this year than in the same period last year, but PM2.5 concentrations from October to Dec. 28 this year were nearly 60 percent lower than last year, the Reuters figures show.

Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Huang Wei said that less than half of the improvement is due to favorable weather - particularly stronger northerly winds and low humidity – with the government’s policies behind most of the change.

The Chinese government launched a winter smog “battleplan” in October for 28 northern cities that called for strict rules on emissions during the winter heating months when pollution typically worsens.

The authorities also sought to make sure that Beijing wasn’t too polluted during October’s Communist Party congress, which is only held once every five years, at which Xi Jinping consolidated his power as the nation’s leader. Some of the more-polluting businesses in and around the capital were told to shut down for a period before and during the gathering.

The plan for the winter months included switching millions of households and some industrial users to natural gas from coal for their heating and some other needs. There were also mandated cuts in steel production by up to 50 percent in some of the areas surrounding the city.

CONTRAST WITH INDIA

Beijing’s improving air quality stands in stark contrast to India’s capital New Delhi, where pollution has steadily become worse over the past few years, and is now well above Beijing‘s.

China’s improvement, and deterioration in some other countries, means China is now not among the ten worst countries for pollution in the world anymore, according to at least one measure.

“At the national level, India tops the index rankings, followed by Bangladesh and Thailand,” said Richard Hewston, global head of environment and climate change at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, which measures 198 countries for air quality.

(For a graphic on Beijing average annual PM2.5 concentration, click tmsnrt.rs/2BRDCAL)

Beijing’s clean-air campaign hasn’t been without its challenges.

The government this year botched the switch from coal to natural gas, leading to recent widespread shortages of gas, soaring liquefied natural gas prices, leaving some residents freezing in their homes and some factories shuttered.

There is also a wider economic cost. Growth in industrial output, especially in northern China, has slowed because of the pollution crackdown, economists say, and the prices of some key commodities, from LNG to copper, have risen.

Some of those who had been benefiting from the poor air quality by selling air filtration products have been taking a hit.

“Overall demand in China is down... Some companies have 100 million yuan ($15.35 million) in unsold inventory this year as a result of the improved air quality,” said Liam Bates, CEO of Beijing-based Kaiterra, which makes air filters and air quality monitoring products.

“We haven’t seen huge impact because we’re expanding heavily overseas. While the air in China is getting better, the air in India is much, much worse and we just opened our India office,” he said.

Reporting by Muyu Xu and Elias Glenn; Additional reporting by Josephine Mason and Cate Cadell in Beijing, Henning Gloystein in Singapore and Valerie Volcovici in Washington D.C.; Editing by Martin Howell

[GeneChing]

BIG TECH BACKLASH 6 hours ago
Apple supply workers describe noxious hazards, unsafe conditions at China factory (http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/01/18/apple-supply-workers-describe-noxious-hazards-unsafe-conditions-at-china-factory.html)
Christopher Carbone By Christopher Carbone | Fox News

http://a57.foxnews.com/images.foxnews.com/content/fox-news/tech/2018/01/18/apple-supply-workers-describe-noxious-hazards-unsafe-conditions-at-china-factory/_jcr_content/par/featured_image/media-0.img.jpg/931/524/1516217735811.jpg?ve=1&tl=1
A report by China Labor Watch alleges that working conditions at an Apple supplier factory are not safe. (Reuters)

Workers at a Chinese company that produces iPhone casings for Apple stand for up to 10 hours per day in over-heated spaces, handling noxious chemicals sometimes without proper protection.

The conditions at Catcher Technology—described in a report by the advocacy group China Labor Watch and in interviews with Bloomberg News—show the ugly side of the tech boom that has powered China’s economy and helped push global stock markets to new highs.

The CLW report also found that at least one worker had severe respiratory issues due to the factory, basic safety equipment is not always available, the factory does not specify the hazards of any chemicals that employees work with, worker dorms do not have emergency exits, the factory is polluting the environment with wastewater and the factory’s floor is covered in slippery oil.

China Labor Watch reports that noise level in the factory is about 80 decibels or more, which is average for factories. Hundreds of employees reportedly work in a space where the main door only opens 12 inches and workers who are off-duty stay in dorms without hot water or access to showers.

http://a57.foxnews.com/images.foxnews.com/content/fox-news/tech/2018/01/18/apple-supply-workers-describe-noxious-hazards-unsafe-conditions-at-china-factory/_jcr_content/article-text/article-par-5/inline_spotlight_ima/image.img.jpg/612/344/1516217808573.jpg?ve=1&tl=1
Catcher Technology, a supplier for Apple, has not kept its factory safe for workers, according to a new report. (Reuters)

“My hands turned bloodless white after a day of work,” one of the workers, who makes a little over 4,000 yuan a month (just over $2 an hour), told Bloomberg. She turned to Catcher because her husband’s home-decorating business was struggling. “I only tell good things to my family and keep the sufferings like this for myself.”

This isn’t the first time Apple has been called out regarding conditions in Chinese factories that make its highly-profitable smartphones.

The tech giant spent years upbraiding manufacturers after a rash of suicides at its main partner, Foxconn Technology Group, in 2010 provoked outrage over the harsh working environments in which its upscale gadgets were made. Eventually, Foxconn made improvements to its locations and Apple started regular audits of all its main suppliers.

However, Apple’s supply chain is so gigantic that adhering to better standards is extremely difficult. The company, which sells more than 200 million smartphones per year, outsources a good amount of its manufacturing as a way to increase profits.

An Apple spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company has its own employees at Catcher facilities, but sent an additional team to audit the complex upon hearing of the CLW’s impending report. After interviewing 150 people, the Apple team found no evidence of violations of its standards, she added. Catcher, which gets almost two-thirds of sales from Apple, said in a separate statement it too investigated but also found nothing to suggest it had breached its client’s code of conduct.

“We know our work is never done and we investigate each and every allegation that’s made. We remain dedicated to doing all we can to protect the workers in our supply chain,” the Apple spokeswoman added.

Christopher Carbone is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @christocarbone.

thread: Apple/Mac (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?2691-Apple-Mac)
thread: China's Pollution Problem (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67175-China-s-Pollution-problem)
thread: Made in China (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?66168-Made-in-China)

[GeneChing]

Yeah, this needs an indie thread here.

BOOM!

:cool:


No bang, no buck: What China has to give up for clean air this Lunar New Year (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2133109/chinas-lunar-new-year-fireworks-ban-struggle-between-protecting)
No delight of seeing fireworks, no income for firecracker sellers ... many Chinese cities have to forego tradition to protect the environment over the festive season
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 14 February, 2018, 1:17pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 14 February, 2018, 9:53pm
Zhuang Pinghui

https://cdn3.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/980x551/public/images/methode/2018/02/14/4065ca96-1013-11e8-851b-21ca695cbae4_1280x720_144832.JPG?itok=Tj8ZUS1f

Ning Jiang loved his fireworks. Every Lunar New Year, the Beijing resident enjoyed driving his daughter to a local fireworks stall. He would watch with delight as the girl picked out her favourite pyrotechnics, favouring those shaped as bees, butterflies or even princesses.

But Ning preferred those smaller, basic firecrackers; the kind that always could be counted on to produce a bang so loud and so startling they would echo throughout the neighbourhood.

“There are traditions for holidays for follow and one of mine is to fire firecrackers,” Ning told the South China Morning Post. “What is a New Year’s celebration without firecrackers?”

More and more Chinese municipalities are about to find out.

Government efforts to curb China’s dire smog problem have led to bans on fireworks in 444 cities across the country since last year.

https://cdn3.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/02/14/4cf38014-1013-11e8-851b-21ca695cbae4_1320x770_144832.JPG
A worker processes pyrotechnic product at the Liuyang Standard Fireworks factory in Liuyang, Hunan province. Photo: Reuters

With the fast approach of Lunar New Year – when the sound of fireworks usually echoes across Chinese towns and cities – this year, authorities have extended the bans further, including Beijing, Tianjin and the provincial capitals Hefei and Changsha.

Last year, within four hours on the eve of Lunar New Year, Beijing’s level of PM2.5, a small, hazardous particle, soared from 75 to 647 micrograms per cubic metre, way beyond the upper limit of 500 on China’s air quality index, because of fireworks, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

On the eve of Lunar New Year in the previous year, the level of PM2.5 reached 700 micrograms per cubic metre, also because of fireworks.

Nationwide, almost all 10 cities with the highest PM2.5 level during the Lunar New Year holiday from 2015 to 2017 hit their peak numbers on the eve and early morning of Lunar New Year. The high figures were caused mainly by fireworks.

Ning is among those who have been willing to trade the combustible, albeit pleasurable tradition of fireworks for cleaner air.

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Fireworks remain popular in rural villages and smaller cities, where they are frequently used to mark occasions such as funerals, weddings and other celebrations. Photo: Reuters

In recent years he has reduced his fireworks spending to 300 yuan (US$47) from as much as 5,000 yuan, following particularly bad winter air pollution from Lunar New Year fireworks in 2013.

If China’s lovers of fireworks resisted the crackdown initially, it was understandable.

China’s attachment to fireworks runs deep.

Not only are fireworks something China invented (along with gunpowder) but they were viewed as a way to chase away Nian, a mythological beast that could only be kept at bay with loud explosions.

The tradition of fending off evil spirits with firecrackers became embedded in the Lunar New Year celebration.

Yet rising concern for the tradition’s impact on air quality after years of severe pollution has changed the mindset even of hard core fireworks enthusiasts like Ning and others who embrace the festival spirit of the holiday season.

Indeed, more than 83 per cent of people who took part in a Beijing government survey at the end of last year said they would throw their support behind a possible fireworks ban.

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The tradition of keeping away evil spirits with firecrackers became embedded in the Lunar New Year celebration. Photo: Reuters

Armed with this public endorsement, in December, the Beijing legislature announced that the capital would ban fireworks within the fifth ring road, which encircles the city about 10km (6 miles) from its core, and allow fireworks to be lit only in specified suburban areas and at specific times.

Ning said he would miss the festival nights with their pyrotechnic explosions, but fully supported the ban.

“It would be such a shame if we complained about the air quality and at the same time polluted the air in a big way,” he said.

“Fireworks is part of the Chinese festival celebration tradition … but I will cut it to the minimum.

“That’s the least we residents can do.”

The latest bans add to an already difficult business climate for fireworks sellers.

Fireworks remain popular in rural villages and smaller cities, where they are frequently used to mark occasions such as funerals, weddings and other celebrations, the fireworks sellers said.

But demand had already been on the wane in larger cities, where there are restrictions on letting off fireworks outside the Lunar New Year period.

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Demand for fireworks has waned for some time in larger cities, where there are restrictions on letting off fireworks outside the Lunar New Year period. Photo: Reuters

Younger consumers in the cities also see fireworks as old-fashioned, they said, and were less inclined to let their children play with them owing to a lack of space and safety concerns.

President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive also prompted government departments and state-owned enterprises to tighten the spending of public money, including lavish celebrations and the gifting of fireworks to employees for Lunar New Year.

Sun Jianlong, who had been selling firecrackers for five years in a stall outside the third ring, about five kilometres from the city centre, left Beijing to go back to his Hebei home for an early holiday because he could not get a licence.

“Selling firecrackers had been a difficult business these years but it was my income in winter,” Sun said. “I couldn’t make money this year.”

Beijing first banned fireworks in 1993 after 544 people were injured by firecrackers and more than 200 letters were sent to the Beijing government demanding a ban.

Yet the ban was difficult to reinforce and lawmakers proposed changing the ban to restrict use of firecrackers. That proposal led to a relaxation of laws in 2005 that allowed residents to set off firecrackers at certain time during Lunar New Year.

The firecracker ban came back on the table in 2012 after air quality declined.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: sacrifices made in push for cleaner Lunar New Year air

Thread: Firecrackers (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70695-Firecrackers)
Thread: 2018 Year of the EARTH DOG (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70579-2018-Year-of-the-EARTH-DOG)
Thread: China's Pollution problem (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67175-China-s-Pollution-problem)

[GeneChing]

Now China has become powerful enough to no longer be the dumping grounds for the rest of the world, to refuse the world's refuse.


Plastics Pile Up as China Refuses to Take the West’s Recycling
(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china-recyclables-ban.html)By KIMIKO de FREYTAS-TAMURAJAN. 11, 2018

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/01/12/world/europe/12UK-recycling-2/merlin_131863700_1975c292-ab02-4536-8dcb-299d9c622576-master768.jpg
Officials in Britain and the West are scrambling to cope with growing piles of plastics like this one in China. Beijing banned the import of many recyclables on Jan.1. Credit Fred Dufour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

LONDON — Ever since China announced last year that it no longer wanted to be the “world’s garbage dump,” recycling about half of the globe’s plastics and paper products, Western nations have been puzzling over what to do when the ban went into effect, which it did on Jan. 1.

The answer, to date, in Britain at least, is nothing. At least one waste disposal site in London is already seeing a buildup of plastic recyclables and has had to pay to have some of it removed.

Similar backups have been reported in Canada, Ireland, Germany and several other European nations, while tons of rubbish is piling up in port cities like Hong Kong.

Steve Frank, of Pioneer Recycling in Oregon, owns two plants that collect and sort 220,000 tons of recyclable materials each year. A majority of it was until recently exported to China.

“My inventory is out of control,” he said.

China’s ban, Mr. Frank said, has caused “a major upset of the flow of global recyclables.” Now, he said, he is hoping to export waste to countries like Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Malaysia — “anywhere we can” — but “they can’t make up the difference.”

In Britain, Jacqueline O’Donovan, managing director of the British waste disposal firm, O’Donovan Waste Disposal, said that “the market has completely changed” since China’s decision went into effect. Her company collects and disposes of about 70,000 tons of plastic trash every year, she said, and expects “huge bottlenecks across the whole of England” in the coming months.

Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, pledged on Thursday to eliminate avoidable wastes within 25 years. In a prepared speech, she urged supermarkets to introduce plastic-free aisles where all the food is loose.

The European Union, for its part, plans to propose a tax on plastic bags and packaging, citing the China ban and the health of the oceans among other reasons.

Those measures might help ease the situation some day, but for now Britain is faced with growing piles of recyclables and no place to put them. Experts say the immediate response to the crisis may well be to turn to incineration or landfills — both harmful to the environment.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/01/05/world/europe/05UK-recycling-1/merlin_131863853_e05d3fc3-13ec-4494-887f-08abdbfa3bdd-master675.jpg
A recycling center near Ascot, England. Credit Steve Parsons/Press Association, via Associated Press

China’s ban covers imports of 24 kinds of solid waste, including unsorted paper and the low-grade polyethylene terephthalate used in plastic bottles, as part of a broad cleanup effort and a campaign against “yang laji,” or “foreign garbage.” It also sets new limits on the levels of impurities in other recyclables.

China had been processing at least half of the world’s exports of waste paper, metals and used plastic — 7.3 million tons in 2016, according to recent industry data. Last July, China notified the World Trade Organization that it intended to ban some imports of trash, saying the action was needed to protect the environment and improve public health.

“Large amounts of dirty wastes or even hazardous wastes are mixed in the solid waste that can be used as raw materials,” Beijing wrote to the W.T.O. “This polluted China’s environment seriously.”

Chinese officials also complained that much of the recyclable material the country received from overseas had not been properly cleaned or was mixed with non-recyclable materials.

The sudden move has left Western countries scrambling to deal with a buildup of plastic and paper garbage while looking for new markets for the waste.

“It’s not just a U.K. problem,” said Simon Ellin, chief executive of the Recycling Association in Britain. “The rest of the world is thinking, ‘What can we do?’ It’s tough times.”

In Halifax, Nova Scotia, which sent 80 percent of its recycling to China, Matthew Keliher, the city’s manager of solid waste, said he had largely found alternatives to accept plastic, except for the low-grade plastic film that is used to make shopping bags and for wrapping. Stockpiles of those plastics have so exceeded the city’s storage capacity that Halifax had to get special permission to bury about 300 metric tons of the material in a landfill.

In Calgary, Alberta, which sent 50 percent of its plastics and 100 percent of its mixed papers to China, the material has been stockpiled in empty storage sheds, shipping containers, trailers and warehouses since last fall. So far, 5,000 tons has been collected, Sharon Howland, the city’s lead manager of waste and recycling services, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

“The material are a sellable resource, so we will store them as long as we can and evaluate our options from there,” she said.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/01/11/world/europe/xxuk-recycling3/merlin_126494897_0a8ddd4f-6a74-4b43-9eae-0582a93ff3e2-master675.jpg
A mountain of garbage and plastic bags at a dump in Nairobi, Kenya. Credit Ben Curtis/Associated Press

In Britain, even the political class appeared caught by surprise. When asked in front of lawmakers about the impending ban last month, Environment Secretary Michael Gove fumbled: “I don’t know what impact it will have. It is something to which — I will be completely honest — I have not given sufficient thought.”

Pollution from plastics has captured global attention in recent years. A new David Attenborough series on the BBC, “Blue Planet II,” has shown plastic bags and bottles clogging oceans and killing fish, turtles and other marine wildlife, prompting governments to put in place more stringent rules.

Every year, Britain sends China enough recyclables to fill up 10,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, according to Greenpeace U.K. The United States exports more than 13.2 million tons of scrap paper and 1.42 million tons of scrap plastics annually to China, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries has reported. That is the sixth-largest American export to China.

“There may be alternative markets but they’re not ready today,” said Emmanuel Katrakis, the secretary general of the European Recycling Industries’ Confederation in Brussels.

Mr. Katrakis dismissed China’s claims that all imported scrap waste contained high levels of contaminants, and said that Beijing’s thresholds for most types of scrap were “far more demanding” than in Europe or the United States. At the same time, he said, Europe has focused too much on collecting plastic waste and shipping it out, and not enough on encouraging manufacturers to use it in new products.

“We’ve got to start producing less and we’ve got to produce better-quality recyclable goods,” Mr. Ellin said.

Too often, he said, manufacturers produce environmentally harmful products and then “pass the buck” to retailers, who in turn pass it to local councils to pick up the tab to sort out the waste for recycling.

“What’s happened is that the final link in the supply chain has turned around and said: ‘No, we’re not going to take this poor-quality stuff anymore. Keep it for yourself.’”

“The contamination can no longer be more than 0.5 percent,” he said, referring to the stringent levels that China has imposed on some of the materials that it hasn’t banned so far.

Is plastic waste from overseas “the reason why you can’t see blue skies in China?” he asked. “I don’t think so. Go fight the big battles, not the small battles.”

Ian Austen contributed reporting from Ottawa, and Catherine Porter from Toronto.

[GeneChing]

I just came back from vacationing in Europe. What a horrific situation to come home.


It's not just fog turning the sky gray: SF air quality is 3 times worse than Beijing (https://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/air-quality-wildfire-smoke-fog-gray-breathe-health-13178427.php)
By Michelle Robertson, SFGATE Updated 7:41 pm PDT, Thursday, August 23, 2018

https://s.hdnux.com/photos/75/20/46/16058756/3/920x920.png
The Air Quality Index for San Francisco today is 152, and therefore "unhealthy." Photo: AQI
Photo: AQI

The gray haze over San Francisco isn't just summer fog. It's also smoke from a series of wildfires burning on the West Coast, which has pushed air quality into unhealthy levels.

The Air Quality Index for San Francisco Thursday was 152, qualifying as "unhealthy." At this level, even those without respiratory diseases may begin to experience negative side effects, such as coughing, trouble breathing and irritated eyes and airways. Parts of the East Bay, including Oakland and Berkeley, and the South Bay were also in the "unhealthy" air quality range.

Smoke from West Coast fires — in Northern California, the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia — spread over the Pacific Ocean and onshore winds are pushing it into the Bay Area, said Daniel Alrick, a meteorologist at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, by tweet.

On Wednesday the agency extended an Air Quality Advisory for the Bay Area through Sunday.

"Smoke conditions that were forecast to subside, changed due to a deeper than forecast marine layer. Smoke was aloft and mixed down to the surface, due to a deep fog layer and strong onshore winds," an agency statement explained.

The air was so bad in the Bay Area, it was three times worse than that of Beijing, which was at 46 on the AQI Thursday.

The Bay Area Air District recommends residents avoid prolonged exposure to the smoke by remaining indoors with their windows and doors closed.

[GeneChing]

The notable thing here is that Beijing has become the standard for measurement of air quality.


Seattle’s Air Quality Was Five Times Worse Than Beijing’s This Week. Here's Why It’s the Future (http://fortune.com/2018/08/21/seattle-air-quality-beijing-five-times-worse-fires-natural-gas/)
By GLENN FLEISHMAN August 21, 2018

Beijing has become the poster child of urban pollution with its air routinely in the hazardous range of 301 to 500 in the Air Quality Index, and, at times, above where the scale usually ends, topping 700.

But this month, Seattle has routinely outpaced Beijing, sometimes with air five times as dirty, reaching an AQI of 150 to 200 for hours or days running, including most of Monday and Tuesday this week.

Meanwhile, Beijing’s rate this week was as low as the 30s, though it rose during the day to top 100. In July, however, the city averaged 44, the seventh-lowest average since 2008.

The reason for the shift? China’s crackdown on bad air, seen as a lag on quality of life and economic development, and widespread wildfires across the west of North America for another summer, in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. With the winds in the right (or wrong) direction, Seattle, Spokane, and other major cities in the region get covered in smoke and visible ash.

This ratio isn’t a blip. China added new regulations and stepped up enforcement to move business and individuals away from coal, burned both in homes and in industrial operations that surround Beijing, and largely towards natural gas for heating and powering factories. This has led to less pollution, but also hardship—and cold homes—for households during the transition. Natural-gas supplies in China are tight despite a huge increase in domestic production.

Meanwhile, global climate change and further residential settlement into forested areas across North America mean an increasing likelihood of wildfires of the scope seen on average across the last decade on the West Coast. People are the cause of most wildfires—usually by accident—and climate change has led to hotter, drier summers. A long history of preventing fires has also led to woods full of the equivalent of kindling that can go up like an explosion and that burn hotter than fires that occur naturally.

Seattle and other Northwest cities are likely to see these levels of pollutants routinely in future summers, based on winds.

The AQI measures various air pollution sources, picking the highest number among them. With fires and smog, the high numbers almost always count particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter in a volume, which can penetrate the lungs and enter the bloodstream. These particles’ diameter are about 3% of the width of a human hair. The so-called PM2.5 reading counts the number of such particles as micrograms per cubic meter of air.

At the highest levels, breathing air outside on a single day can be the equivalent health risk of smoking a couple dozen cigarettes.

At 51 to 100, the risk is mostly for those with a high sensitivity. From 101 to 150, experts recommend children, the elderly, and at-risk individuals with asthma and other conditions avoid exertion. Cross 150 into the “unhealthy” label, and public health officials recommend everyone take care. Above 200, and the situation starts to worsen, with everyone at risk of serious health conditions. The 500 mark is well beyond reasonable concern.

[GeneChing]

It's actually unfair to Beijing now as shown in this article. It's just reputation.



How Air in the Pacific Northwest Became Dirtier Than Beijing’s (https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-wildfires-burn-miles-away-smog-blankets-the-northwest-1535535001)
Spokane schools move practice inside, Seattle delays flights, and hospitals see more patients as wildfires burn in states miles away
After air quality kept several practices indoors in recent weeks, football players at Mt. Spokane High School in Spokane, Wash., were finally able to train outside on Aug. 23. NOUR MALAS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Jim Carlton and Nour Malas
Updated Aug. 29, 2018 5:46 p.m. ET

SPOKANE, Wash.—On a recent morning in this city bred on the great outdoors, the halls of Mt. Spokane High School were filled with some 600 football players throwing spirals, cross-country runners doing laps, and marching band members twirling batons.

The air outside was too smoky to breathe.

The Pacific Northwest, sandwiched between Canada’s smoldering British Columbia to the north and six fire-wracked Western U.S. states, is feeling the side effects of one of the worst fire seasons on record. For much of the past several weeks, clouds of choking smog have upended daily life and posed a health hazard for millions here.

“It was like being at a campfire wherever you went,” said Paul Kautzman, Mt. Spokane’s athletic director, after a particularly noxious day.

Crops are growing slower because of hazy skies, the Seattle Seahawks moved practice to an indoor facility, and people are showing up at hospitals and medical clinics with complaints of wheezing, shortness of breath and other ailments. Long-planned surgeries have been canceled because patients are too ill from the smoke.

In Spokane last week, a thick, gray fog draped the sky, obscuring the view of Mount Spokane and the fir trees that dot the skyline here. A YMCA camp had to shuttle 60 children from a park to its nearest indoor facility, a former Gold’s Gym, where they arrived wearing protective masks.

https://images.wsj.net/im-23751?width=1260&aspect_ratio=1.5
Mt. Spokane freshman football players practice in the school gym. Smoke from fires in six Western U.S. states and Canada’s British Columbia has blanketed the Pacific Northwest in clouds of choking smog. PHOTO: NOUR MALAS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

This region has dealt with smoke pollution before, but this year has been significantly worse, residents and experts say.

Aug. 20 was the worst day so far for Spokane, population 215,000. Its air was dirtier than that of any major city—outpacing typically smog-addled places like Beijing and Lahore, Pakistan, according to a global pollution survey by IQAir Group, a Swiss-based manufacturer of air-pollution equipment that has a data collection unit. Among 80 cities with populations of more than 300,000, Vancouver, British Columbia, had the worst air quality in the world that day, followed by Seattle, IQAir said.

Under the Air Quality Index, a standard followed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 101 to 150 is considered unhealthy for sensitive groups, 151 to 200 is unhealthy for everyone, and over 200 very unhealthy. Spokane reached a high of 226 last week. Vancouver hit 165.

Eric Lewis, chief executive of Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles, Wash., on the Olympic Peninsula north of Seattle, said he has experienced a sore throat, raspy voice and difficulty breathing—even though he suffers from no respiratory illness and has forsaken his daily walks for more than two weeks.

“It’s like suddenly becoming a smoker,” he said.


Hard to Breathe
Cities in the Pacific Northwest ranked among the worst in the world for air quality on Aug.20. Higher numbers signal worse air quality.*
Average daily air quality for select cities
Source: AirVisual
*An air quality index of 100 or greater is considered unhealthy for sensitive individuals; 150 or greater is considered dangerous for everyone.

Vancouver, Canada 165
Seattle 162
Dubai 152
Jakarta, Indonesia 151
Mumbai 149
Lahore, Pakistan 148
Lima, Peru 127
Chengdu, China 119
Denver 118
Portland, Ore. 109
Beijing 61
Rain over the Spokane area cleared out the skies Sunday and Monday, but smoky conditions were expected to return later this week there and in other parts of the Pacific Northwest that got a reprieve.

Experts say it is unclear when the smoke will lift for good. An unusually stubborn ridge of high pressure has blocked most of the cleansing onshore winds from the Pacific, said Ranil Dhammapala, an atmospheric scientist at the Washington State Department of Ecology.

High-pressure systems and wildfires are frequent occurrences this time of year in the region, but the duration and extent of the pollution is unusual, said Mr. Dhammapala.

While long-term effects of the smoke inhalation are unknown, short-term effects including coughing and shortness of breath are most pronounced in people with respiratory problems such as asthma and emphysema, said Colleen Reid, assistant professor of geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies climate change and public health.

Officials at the PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham, Wash., north of Seattle, said they received about 100 telephone complaints of respiratory symptoms on the morning of Aug. 20. Managers at Hoagland Pharmacy in the same city said they sold 85 air-filtration masks out of a case of 100 within hours of its arrival on Aug. 22.

“Even people who don’t have lung conditions have been feeling ill effects,” said Sarah Farmer, a respiratory therapist at the pharmacy.

Kara Glass, a 24-year-old farmer in Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley, missed a week of work due to respiratory problems. She said her family also lost two weeks during which they would normally pick cantaloupes and one of their four annual cuttings of alfalfa because smoke-filled skies made the crops grow slower than usual.

https://images.wsj.net/im-23752?width=1260&aspect_ratio=1.5
‘It was like being at a campfire wherever you went,’ said Paul Kautzman, Mt. Spokane’s athletic director. PHOTO: NOUR MALAS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Few places have been more affected than Spokane, where residents thrive on easy access to lushly forested mountains and trout-filled lakes and streams. With smoke blanketing the Spokane Valley for much of August—a tie for the longest such period in at least 20 years of record-keeping—many have been rushing to escape the great outdoors.

Local YMCA administrators say people who usually hike or swim outdoors have been filling their indoor gyms and pools instead. That has made for some cramped conditions, such as when two school cross-country teams came to the YMCA of the Inland Northwest branch on the same day last week to practice.

“Everyone is trying to figure out what to do,” said John Ehrbar, the branch’s chief operating officer.

By Thursday, the smoke at Mt. Spokane High School had dissipated enough for some players to enjoy their first outdoor practice of the summer.

“You get a little headache sometimes, but it’s fine,” said Tanner Brooks, a wide receiver and linebacker on the football team. Jacob Zacharias, head drum major for the marching band, was thrilled to get out of the school’s main indoor hall, where runners had to zigzag around the marching band.

“We’re all kind of going stir crazy,” he said.

The reprieve didn’t last long. By midmorning, sports teams and the marching band were called back inside as the air quality worsened. The next day, the school called off a preseason football game.

[GeneChing]

After our forest fires in Cali, I need to invest in some of those N95 masks and just keep them handy, wherever I go now.


DECEMBER 1, 2018 / 3:34 AM / 4 DAYS AGO
Total of 79 Chinese cities trigger air pollution alerts: Xinhua (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution/total-of-79-chinese-cities-trigger-air-pollution-alerts-xinhua-idUSKCN1O038O)
2 MIN READ

http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20181201&t=2&i=1330536294&r=LYNXNPEEB0251
FILE PHOTO: Vehicles move amid heavy smog on a polluted day in Beijing, China November 26, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A total of 79 Chinese cities have triggered air pollution alerts as severe winter smog covers wide swaths of the country, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.

As of Nov. 30, five cities had issued red pollution warnings, the most severe in China’s pollution warning system, 73 had issued orange warnings, the second-most severe, and one city had issued a yellow warning, triggering the implementation of emergency management and control measures, Xinhua reported.

The affected cities lie in and around the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region that includes China’s capital, as well as in the Fenwei plains area of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan provinces, and in the northern Yangtze River delta region, home to Jiangsu province, China’s second-largest steelmaking hub.

China’s capital issued its first air pollution alert for the winter season on Nov. 23, and Jiangu province issued orange smog alerts in late November, forcing factories and utilities to slash output.

Northern China often sees heavy smog over the winter, which runs from mid-November to mid-March, as homes and power utilities burn more coal for power and heating.

On Saturday evening, the concentration of small particulate matter, known as PM2.5, at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven was 193 micrograms per cubic meter, according to data from China’s National Environmental Monitoring Centre, five-and-a-half times the state standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter.

China has taken steps to broaden its campaign against air pollution, including extending a monthly air quality ranking to 169 cities from 74 to pressure local authorities to clean up dirty skies.

Reporting by Andrew Galbraith, editing by Louise Heavens

[GeneChing]

Major bummer. Henan is where Shaolin Temple is. :(


Air quality worsens in China's Henan province, improves elsewhere (https://www.businessinsider.com/r-air-quality-worsens-in-chinas-henan-province-improves-elsewhere-2019-1)
Reuters 18h

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FILE PHOTO - A view of sunset is seen in smog in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China January 2, 2017. Picture taken January 2, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer
A view of sunset is seen in smog in Zhengzhou Thomson Reuters

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Air pollution in China's heavy-industrial province of Henan worsened in December even as other regions improved, official data showed, with its cities hit by unfavorable weather and a struggle to find cleaner sources of economic growth.
For a second year, China is restricting industrial output, traffic and coal consumption in the smog-prone north in a bid to cut pollution during the winter heating period, when thousands of mainly coal-burning boilers are switched on.

But nine cities in Henan, home to around 95 million people, still recorded a rise in small, lung-damaging emissions known as PM2.5 to an average of 82 micrograms per cubic meter in the last month of 2018, up 12 percent from a year earlier.

Emissions in the cities - which include several big steel, aluminum and coal producing districts - had already soared by 107 percent from a year earlier in November, according to a Reuters analysis of official data.

As many as 79 cities throughout the north and east have drawn up plans to control smog this winter, with many committed to cutting PM2.5 emissions by 3 percent from last year.

Among the 79, average PM2.5 levels reached 66 micrograms per cubic meter in December, down 18 percent from a year earlier, according to Reuters calculations. This was still nearly double China's national standard of 35 micrograms.

But the local increases in Henan and elsewhere show how much cities are at the mercy of the weather when it comes to meeting air quality targets, with conditions such as high humidity and low wind exacerbating smog.

"My analysis indicates that (the increases in Henan) are accounted for by the weather," said Lauri Myllyvirta, energy analyst with Greenpeace, who has been tracking the Chinese data.

Henan's smog concentrations have worsened since the end of last year, with the local government saying on Saturday that 12 provincial cities have issued "red alerts" for the coming week.

Some 28 cities in the major pollution control zone around China's capital Beijing are also struggling to meet winter air quality targets, with average PM2.5 in the last two months of 2018 up 17 percent compared with a year earlier.

(Reporting by David Stanway; editing by Richard Pullin)

[GeneChing]

A city in China is feeding a billion cockroaches 50 tons of kitchen scraps a day in an effort to help with urban waste (https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-city-feeds-cockroaches-kitchen-waste-2018-12)
Thomas Suen, Ryan Woo, Reuters Dec. 11, 2018, 10:40 AM

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0edf3fa6df15037b3feb03-1334-1001.jpg
A staff member shows cockroaches in shelves to the camera at a farm operated by pharmaceutical company Gooddoctor. Thomas Suen/Reuters

JINAN, China (Reuters) - In the near pitch-dark, you can hear them before you see them - millions of cockroaches scuttling and fluttering across stacks of wooden boards as they devour food scraps by the ton in a novel form of urban waste disposal.

The air is warm and humid - just as cockroaches like it - to ensure the colonies keep their health and voracious appetites.

Expanding Chinese cities are generating more food waste than they can accommodate in landfills, and cockroaches could be a way to get rid of hills of food scraps, providing nutritious food for livestock when the bugs eventually die and, some say, cures for stomach illness and beauty treatments.

On the outskirts of Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong province, a billion cockroaches are being fed with 50 tons of kitchen waste a day - the equivalent in weight to seven adult elephants.

The waste arrives before daybreak at the plant run by Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Co, where it is fed through pipes to cockroaches in their cells.

Shandong Qiaobin plans to set up three more such plants next year, aiming to process a third of the kitchen waste produced by Jinan, home to about seven million people.

A nationwide ban on using food waste as pig feed due to African swine fever outbreaks is also spurring the growth of the cockroach industry.

"Cockroaches are a bio-technological pathway for the converting and processing of kitchen waste," said Liu Yusheng, president of Shandong Insect Industry Association.

Cockroaches are also a good source of protein for pigs and other livestock. "It's like turning trash into resources," said Shandong Qiaobin chairwoman Li Hongyi.

In a remote village in Sichuan, Li Bingcai, 47, has similar ideas.

Li, formerly a mobile phone vendor, has invested a million yuan ($146,300) in cockroaches, which he sells to pig farms and fisheries as feed and to drug companies as medicinal ingredients.

His farm now has 3.4 million cockroaches.

"People think it's strange that I do this kind of business," Li said. "It has great economic value, and my goal is to lead other villagers to prosperity if they follow my lead."

His village has two farms. Li's goal is to create 20.

Elsewhere in Sichuan, a company called Gooddoctor is rearing six billion cockroaches.

"The essence of cockroach is good for curing oral and peptic ulcers, skin wounds and even stomach cancer," said Wen Jianguo, manager of Gooddoctor's cockroach facility.

Researchers are also looking into using cockroach extract in beauty masks, diet pills and even hair-loss treatments.

At Gooddoctor, when cockroaches reach the end of their lifespan of about six months, they are blasted by steam, washed and dried, before being sent to a huge nutrient extraction tank.

Asked about the chance of the cockroaches escaping, Wen said that would be worthy of a disaster movie but that he has taken precautions.

"We have a moat filled with water and fish," he said. "If the cockroaches escape, they will fall into the moat and the fish will eat them all."

(Reporting by Thomas Suen and Ryan Woo; Editing by Nick Macfie)

On the outskirts of Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong province, a billion cockroaches are being fed with 50 tons of kitchen waste a day - the equivalent in weight to seven adult elephants.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0ee6f467666b049a1b8073-960-720.jpg
Kitchen waste to feed cockroaches is seen at a waste processing facility of Shandong Qiaobin Agriculture Technology. Thomas Suen/Reuters

The waste arrives before daybreak at the plant run by Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Co, where it is fed through pipes to cockroaches in their cells.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0ee6337d51f1045101cf0d-960-720.jpg
Workers sort kitchen waste to feed cockroaches at a waste processing facility. Thomas Suen/Reuters

Shandong Qiaobin plans to set up three more such plants next year, aiming to process a third of the kitchen waste produced by Jinan, home to about seven million people. A nationwide ban on using food waste as pig feed due to African swine fever outbreaks is also spurring the growth of the cockroach industry.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0edecd7d51f1034b2383cb-960-720.jpg
A staff member shows cockroaches in shelves to the camera at a farm operated by pharmaceutical company Gooddoctor. Thomas Suen/Reuters

"Cockroaches are a bio-technological pathway for the converting and processing of kitchen waste," said Liu Yusheng, president of Shandong Insect Industry Association.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0edefe7d51f1034b2383cc-960-720.jpg
Cockroaches fed with kitchen waste are seen in a cell at a waste processing facility. Thomas Suen/Reuters

Cockroaches are also a good source of protein for pigs and other livestock. "It's like turning trash into resources," said Shandong Qiaobin chairwoman Li Hongyi.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0ede4f7e912e02e5386d8d-960-720.jpg
Chen Qianjiang shows a spoonful of powder made of cockroaches. Thomas Suen/Reuters

In a remote village in Sichuan, Li Bingcai, 47, has similar ideas. Li, formerly a mobile phone vendor, has invested a million yuan ($146,300) in cockroaches, which he sells to pig farms and fisheries as feed and to drug companies as medicinal ingredients. His farm now has 3.4 million cockroaches.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0edda32ae63b02975018ec-960-720.jpg
Li Bingcai shows cockroaches at his farm. Thomas Suen/Reuters
continued next post

[GeneChing]

"People think it's strange that I do this kind of business," Li said. "It has great economic value, and my goal is to lead other villagers to prosperity if they follow my lead." His village has two farms. Li's goal is to create 20.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0eddbd77a16503120bf323-960-720.jpg
Children of cockroach farm owner Li Bingcai eat fried cockroaches at his farm in a village in Changning county. Thomas Suen/Reuters

Elsewhere in Sichuan, a company called Gooddoctor is rearing six billion cockroaches.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0edf197d51f1033c3acb6d-960-720.jpg
Cockroaches are seen among cardboards at a farm operated by pharmaceutical company Gooddoctor. Thomas Suen/Reuters

"The essence of cockroach is good for curing oral and peptic ulcers, skin wounds and even stomach cancer," said Wen Jianguo, manager of Gooddoctor's cockroach facility. Researchers are also looking into using cockroach extract in beauty masks, diet pills and even hair-loss treatments.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0edea16bc3e30323294ff7-960-720.jpg
Bottles of Kangfuxin Ye, a liquid potion made of cockroaches, are seen on the production line at a facility operated by pharmaceutical company Gooddoctor. Thomas Suen/Reuters

At Gooddoctor, when cockroaches reach the end of their lifespan of about six months, they are blasted by steam, washed and dried, before being sent to a huge nutrient extraction tank.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0edcf0211ac602cb1137f2-960-720.jpg
A staff member walks among tanks that extract essence from cockroaches at a facility operated by pharmaceutical company Gooddoctor. Thomas Suen/Reuters

Asked about the chance of the cockroaches escaping, Wen said that would be worthy of a disaster movie but that he has taken precautions.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0edd3677a16502e12443b3-960-720.jpg
Workers walk next to cockroach cells under construction at a waste processing facility. Thomas Suen/Reuters

"We have a moat filled with water and fish," he said. "If the cockroaches escape, they will fall into the moat and the fish will eat them all."
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0edd617e912e02e5386d84-960-720.jpg
Workers work on cockroach cells under construction at a waste processing facility. Thomas Suen/Reuters

THREADS
cockroaches (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70778-cockroaches)
China's Pollution problem (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67175-China-s-Pollution-problem)

[GeneChing]

This is a bit ironic. :(



Chinese air pollution dimmed sunlight enough to impact solar panels (https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/air-pollution-costs-china-1-9-billion-in-solar-electricity-each-year/)
Pollution from coal and biomass burning blocks 13% of solar electricity.
SCOTT K. JOHNSON - 7/10/2019, 3:45 AM

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/coal_truck_han_jun_zeng-800x533.jpg
Han Jun Zeng / Flickr

Coal is seen by many as an enemy of renewable energy and the first fossil fuel in line for elimination as things like solar and wind generation have gotten cheaper. But counterattacks from coal can go even further than lobbying against pro-renewable policies, it seems. According to new research, China’s coal-driven air pollution is significantly reducing the output of solar panels by dimming the Sun.

China is easily number one in terms of new solar construction right now, accounting for over half of the world’s installs in 2017, for example. Between 2010 and 2017, China went from having less than 1 gigawatt of solar capacity to 130 gigawatts, and the country is headed for around 400 gigawatts by 2030. After a run of transformative economic growth powered by coal and other fossil fuels, China is dealing with choking air pollution that is a major driving factor in this solar push.

Recent research has compiled a record of solar radiation measurements around China going back to the late 1950s. The research shows a declining trend in solar radiation until about 2005, when it leveled off and began to tick back upward. That tracks the increasing particulate air pollution due to coal-burning power plants and manufacturing—as well as biomass burning—that has only recently been addressed.

A team led by Bart Sweerts at ETH Zürich took that record and fed it into generation models for China’s solar installations to calculate how much generation has been lost—and how much would be gained by cleaning up the air.

The researchers found that, over the entire record between about 1960 and 2015, the average potential solar generation declined by about 13%. Expressed in terms of capacity factor—the fraction of a solar panel’s maximum output that is actually produced on average—the drop from the start to the lowest point in 2008 was 0.162 to 0.142.

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/china_solar_air_pollution_impact-2-640x297.pngThe impact of air pollution on potential solar output, here shown by capacity factor (the amount of electricity a panel produces compared to its technical max).
Sweerts et al./Nature Energy

The change wasn’t the same everywhere, though, as air pollution and local conditions varied. The five worst provinces actually saw potential generation drops of fully 20-28%. These included industrial centers in the east but also some clearer high-elevation areas in the west where a small amount of air pollution can have a big impact.

If China could go back to its 1950s air quality, its existing solar installations in 2016 would have produced an additional 14 terawatt-hours of electricity for free. As more solar panels are built, that number would only grow. By 2030, cleaner air could net an additional 70 terawatt-hours of electricity each year—about 1% of total projected electricity generation at that point.

To put some dollar signs on these numbers, the researchers used the current feed-in tariff of $0.14 per kilowatt-hour and a projected drop to $0.09 per kilowatt-hour in 2030. In 2016, this would mean cleaner air would have brought $1.9 billion worth of electricity. In 2030, the extra 13% or so of solar potential could be worth over $6 billion per year.

For another comparison, solar panel efficiency improvements increased generation by about 10% between 2005 and 2017, helping to make them more cost-competitive. Getting back to 1950s air quality would do more than that in China. As a business proposition, air pollution is holding solar back.

Of course, the researchers note that this is a drop in the bucket compared to the total health and economic cost of air pollution in China. But it adds another valuable—and perhaps surprising—benefit to eliminating pollution from coal and biomass.

[GeneChing]

Why is India's pollution much worse than China's? (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50298972)
5 hours ago

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EPA
Delhi's toxic air is particularly dangerous to children

As India's north continues to struggle with extreme pollution levels, the story has put a fresh spotlight on air quality in cities across Asia.

Beijing has long been notorious for its smog - but statistics show that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have worse air by far.

So why is South Asia so much more polluted?

Asia's most polluted cities

Of the world's most polluted 30 cities, 22 are in India, according to research by IQ AirVisual, a Swiss-based group that gathers air-quality data globally, and Greenpeace.

The remaining eight cities are all in Pakistan, Bangladesh and China - but the list doesn't include Beijing, which comes in at number 122.

Just looking at global capitals, it's also Asian cities that top the ranking.

World's most polluted capitals
Sorted by average yearly PM2.5
Source: World Air Quality Report

Looking at overall countries, it's Bangladesh that has the worst air, followed by Pakistan and then India.

All these rankings are based on average air quality per year.

As these countries have very different densities of measuring stations and transparency of data, the statistics have to be read with a degree of caution. But they certainly indicate an overall trend.

World's most polluted countries
Sorted by estimated average PM2.5
Source: World Air Quality Report

Why is India worse off than China?
Pollution in urban areas is usually a mix of different factors - mostly traffic, fossil fuel burning power plants and heavy industries.

What differentiates China from India is that in the latter, there is still a lot of burning of agricultural stubble when farmers want to clear their fields. The burning usually takes place in autumn.

"In this episode, the big problem really seems to have been the agricultural burning," assistant professor Thomas Smith of the London School of Economics told the BBC.

"That's one thing that China has tackled. All agricultural burning has been banned, full stop."

A global overview for fires and thermal abnormalities is made available by Nasa, and allows users to track developments over past days and weeks.

The area north-west of Delhi shows a highly unusual concentration of fires, Prof Smith points out.

"And you can't underestimate how important agricultural burning is - even though people often think only of cars and heavy industry as the causes."

In the wake of the pollution spike, India's Supreme Court ordered a stop to stubble burning in the states around Delhi.

But the city's situation is made worse by the colder winter air which is more stagnant, trapping the pollutants in place.

Prof Smith also points out that "while India is largely reactive, Beijing tends to be more proactive and preventative to try to stop the problems from happening in the first place".

What does pollution feel like?

Pollution levels are categorised by measuring the levels of dangerous particles in the air. The result is then classified on a scale from good to hazardous.

"The effect of pollution is different for every person," explains Dr Christine Cowie of the University of New South Wales.

"Some people complain about irritation to the eyes, to the throat, exacerbations of wheeze and asthma symptoms. Coughing is certainly also a very common symptom - even in non-asthmatic people.

"And of course it's the elderly who suffer, the very young and people with pre-existing respiratory illnesses like or heart problems."


https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/18383/production/_109530299_airqualityindex-nc.png

She explains that even a short exposure to the unhealthy or worse pollution levels can trigger an asthma attack or increase the risk of a stroke. The longer the exposure, the greater the risks.

And the ways to protect oneself are limited.

There's the advice to stay indoors, to reduce physical exercise and to wear a mask - but in many poorer parts of the world, none of these options really work for regular people.

"It is toxic air," says David Taylor, professor of tropical environmental change at the National University of Singapore.

"It must be very uncomfortable - especially if you're having to work outside and if you're having to do jobs that require quite a lot of energy."

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AFP
Air quality in Delhi has deteriorated into the "hazardous" category

"You feel like it's hard to breathe," agrees Prof Smith.

"It's like doing hardcore exercise when you just take a walk outside. And depending on the kind of pollution, you can of course also smell it in the air."

How does it compare to Europe or the US?

Today, pollution levels in Europe, Australia and the US are significantly lower than the extreme readings that India has experienced in the past few days.

But it's not always been like that. London, for instance, was notorious for its pollution during much of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

As late as 1952, the so-called Great Smog covered London with a thick toxic layer of pollution, bringing the city almost to a standstill for days, not unlike the situation in Delhi now. It's thought to have resulted in thousands of deaths.

While London experienced a different mix of pollutants, "it probably wasn't far off what's currently happening in Delhi," says Mr Taylor.

Back then, power stations along the Thames were major polluters of the British capital.

In fact - much of what we know today about the health impact of air pollution dates back to the experiences of the London smog during those years.

Unfortunately I couldn't copy&paste two key tables. You'll have to follow the link for those.

[GeneChing]

A rubbish story: China's mega-dump full 25 years ahead of schedule (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50429119)
8 hours ago

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GETTY IMAGES
A worker applying a capping layer to a landfill site in Hangzhou

China's largest dump is already full - 25 years ahead of schedule.

The Jiangcungou landfill in Shaanxi Province, which is the size of around 100 football fields, was designed to take 2,500 tonnes of rubbish per day.

But instead it received 10,000 tonnes of waste per day - the most of any landfill site in China.

China is one of the world's biggest polluters, and has been struggling for years with the rubbish its 1.4 billion citizens generate.

How big is the landfill site?

The Jiangcungou landfill in Xi'an city was built in 1994 and was designed to last until 2044.

The landfill serves over 8 million citizens. It spans an area of almost 700,000 square metres, with a depth of 150 metres and a storage capacity of more than 34 million cubic metres.

Until recently, Xi'an was one of the few cities in China that solely relied on landfill to dispose of household waste - leading to capacity being reached early.

Earlier this month, a new incineration plant was opened, and at least four more are expected to open by 2020. Together, they are expected to be able to process 12,750 tonnes of rubbish per day.

The move is part of a national plan to reduce the number of landfills, and instead use other waste disposal methods like incineration.

The landfill site in Xi'an will eventually become an "ecological park".

Where does China's rubbish end up?

Waste collected in 2017

Source: National Bureau of Statistics

How much waste does China produce?

In 2017, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste, according to the country's statistical yearbook. That's up from 152 million ten years earlier.

The country had 654 landfill sites and 286 incineration plants.

It is not clear what China's recycling rate is, as no figures have been released. China plans to recycle 35% of waste in major cities by the end of 2020, according to one government report.

This July, sorting and recycling rubbish was made mandatory in Shanghai - leading to "a sense of panic" among some residents.

In 2015, there was a landslide at a rubbish dump in the southern city of Shenzhen, killing 73 people.

The dump was designed to hold four million cubic metres worth of rubbish, with a maximum height of 95 metres.

When it collapsed, it was holding 5.8m cubic metres of material with waste heaps up to 160m high.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/7585/production/_105058003_img_0678edited.jpg
One town in Malaysia was left swamped with foreign waste

Does China deal with other countries' waste?

Not anymore. It used to, until the end of 2017 when it decided to ban the import of 24 different grades of rubbish.

In 2017 alone, China took in seven million tonnes of plastic rubbish from Europe, Japan and the US - and 27 million tonnes of waste paper.

Other countries, including Malaysia, Turkey, the Philippines and Indonesia, have picked up some of the slack.

But they struggled to deal with the amount of waste coming in - often times resulting in massive, out-of-control landfills in their own countries.

Some of these countries have now banned the import of certain types of rubbish and are even sending it back.

Additional reporting by Ellen Jin Couldn't cut&paste the table graphic. :(

[GeneChing]

Beijing’s air quality shows significant improvements as ‘war on pollution’ targets coal use (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3044747/beijings-air-quality-shows-significant-improvements-war)
The Chinese capital has seen levels of the most harmful particles known as PM2.5 more than halve since the 2013 drive to tackle the problem started
While there is still work to be done, controls on coal burning and vehicle emissions are seen as key to rapid turnaround
Echo Xie in Beijing
Published: 7:35pm, 5 Jan, 2020

https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/1200x800/public/d8/images/methode/2020/01/05/ed94a0c8-2fad-11ea-8334-1a17c6a14ef4_image_hires_193523.JPG?itok=LeX6mhgM&v=1578224130
The drive to tackle pollution has helped clean up Beijing’s atmosphere. Photo: AFP

Beijing’s air quality has improved significantly since the start of the “war on pollution” seven years ago, according to official figures.
In 2019, the capital’s average concentration of PM2.5 – the most harmful small particles and a key indicator of air pollution – fell to their lowest levels since its integrated air quality monitoring network started operating in 2013.
The 2019 average concentration of 42 micrograms per cubic metre was 53 per cent lower than the 2013 figure of 89.5, according to the municipal ecology and environment bureau.
The average concentration of PM10 particles and nitrogen dioxide were 68 and 37 micrograms per cubic metre, both in line with national targets.

https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2020/01/05/055a37b8-2fae-11ea-8334-1a17c6a14ef4_1320x770_193523.JPG
Curbing coal use has been identified as one of the key policies. Photo: Reuters

Although some pollution levels still far exceed international recommendations, the Chinese capital’s rapid progress has been hailed by the United Nations as an example of how quickly things can be turned around.
Joyce Msuya, the deputy executive director of the UN’s environment programme, wrote in a report in March last year that “no other city or region on the planet has achieved such a feat”, which she said was the result of “an enormous investment of time, resources and political will”.
The UN report, based on pollution data from 1998 to 2017, concluded that the controls on coal-fired boilers, the use of cleaner fuels in residential sectors and better controls on industry were the three most important measures.
Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based non-governmental organisation, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said the improvement was the result of policies such as controls on coal combustion, vehicle emission controls, coordination with surrounding areas and better data transparency.
China started its “war on pollution” in 2013, with President Xi Jinping identifying it as one of the country’s three biggest challenges in 2017.
Since the start of the anti-pollution campaign, the Beijing municipal authorities have closed all coal-fired plants and encouraged residents to stop using coal-fired boilers in favour of natural gas and electricity in winter.
Although that policy faced a challenge in the winter of 2017-18 when gas shortages left residents across many cities in northern China without heating, the amount of coal burned in the capital itself has declined significantly from a peak of about 30 million tonnes in 2005 to 4 million in 2018, according to the environment bureau in Beijing.
This has also resulted in the concentration of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere dropping by 85 per cent from 28 microgrammes per cubic metre in 2013 to 4 in 2019.

https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2020/01/05/ceaf59be-2fad-11ea-8334-1a17c6a14ef4_1320x770_193523.JPG
Pollution is still a problem in the Chinese capital, and it has yet to meet national targets for PM2.45 levels. Photo: EPA-EFE

The campaign has also seen pollution levels falling across the country.
According to central government figures, in 2018, the national average concentration of PM2.5 was 39 micrograms per cubic meter, 9.3 per cent lower than the previous year.
Across 338 major cities, the air quality was classified as “good” for 79.3 per cent of the time, just short of the 2020 target of 80 per cent good air quality days.
But despite these successes, there is still a long way to go in tackling the problem.
Last year the concentration of PM2.5 in Beijing – 42 microgrammes per cubic metre – was still above the national air quality standard of 35, and far exceeded the World Health Organisation’s recommended figure of 10.
2020 is the final leg of a three-year plan to tackle Xi’s three biggest challenges, and Ma said the next step should be to aim to meet national air quality standards and improve the way industry operates.
“There’s been a rebound of emissions from energy-intensive companies after last autumn,” he said, adding that the trade war and slowing economy had seen officials loosening controls.
“So China needs to optimise its energy structure and industry structure to really achieve the green transformation,” he said.
However, he said the fight against air pollution had made much more progress than efforts to tackle soil and water pollution.
“The next question is how to set higher standards and improve the quality of the environment in an innovative way,” he said.
Finally some good news! :)

[GeneChing]

So who's the next biggest user of single-use plastic?


Single-use plastic: China to ban bags and other items (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51171491)
1 hour ago

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/1193C/production/_110569917_gettyimages-1165810998.jpg
GETTY IMAGES
China has for years been struggling to deal with the rubbish its 1.4 billion citizens generate

China, one of the world's biggest users of plastic, has unveiled a major plan to reduce single-use plastics across the country.

Non-degradable bags will be banned in major cities by the end of 2020 and in all cities and towns by 2022.

The restaurant industry will also be banned from using single-use straws by the end of 2020.

China has for years been struggling to deal with the rubbish its 1.4 billion citizens generate.

The country's largest rubbish dump - the size of around 100 football fields - is already full, 25 years ahead of schedule.

China's mega-dump already full

In 2017 alone, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste. But national figures for recycling are not available.

China produced 60 million tonnes of plastic waste in 2010, followed by the US at 38 million tonnes, according to online publication Our World in Data based at the University of Oxford.

The research was published in 2018 and said the "relative global picture is similar in projections up to 2025".

What has changed?The National Development and Reform Commission on Sunday issued the new policy, which will be implemented over the next five years.

Plastic bags will be banned across all cities and towns in 2022, though markets selling fresh produce will be exempt until 2025.

The production and sale of plastic bags that are less than 0.025mm thick will also be banned.

The restaurant industry must reduce the use of single-use plastic items by 30%.

Hotels have been told that they must not offer free single-use plastic items by 2025.

[GeneChing]

Empty Cities and Stalled Industrial Production, New Analysis Shows Coronavirus Has Cut China's Carbon Emissions by 100 Million Metric Tons (https://time.com/5786634/coronavirus-carbon-emissions-china/?fbclid=IwAR0tn_kvTMYGJv_iOlftpVzMasQM9leXZQXyFUPq 7rf9J-2ggXRECFSqHUg)

https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/coronavirus-carbon-emissions-china.jpg?w=800&quality=85
A view of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing's Tiantan Park on Feb. 19, 2020. Artyom Ivanov—TASS/Getty Images

BY AKSHAT RATHI AND JEREMY HODGES / BLOOMBERG FEBRUARY 19, 2020

One of the deadliest epidemics in decades has dented energy demand and industrial output in China, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by about 100 million metric tons—close to what Chile emits in a year.

A new analysis by the climate nonprofit Carbon Brief found that the widespread impact of the virus—including travel restrictions, longer holidays, and lower economic activity—means that neither has recovered from the usual lull around the Chinese New Year, a roughly two-week festival that began this year on January 25.

The report looked at emissions during the two-week period beginning 10 days after the start of the festival and compared that to the same period for each of the previous five years. Over that period in 2019, China emitted 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide; this year’s figure is likely closer to 300 million metric tons.

Coal consumption also has yet to recover from its usual holiday breather. A month before the Lunar New Year, burning of the dirtiest fossil fuel was in line with previous years’ rates. Since then, it’s fallen to a four-year low, according to the analysis.

China’s economy is grinding to a halt as the government scrambles to stop the spread of the deadly Wuhan coronavirus, fueling fears that efforts to contain the outbreak will have
Although pictures of empty city centers and public transport might seem like evidence for the large decline in emissions, the fact is that China’s energy consumption is dominated by industry. The reduction in emissions is mostly a result of lower output from oil refineries and lower coal use for power generation and steel-making, as China’s government struggles to control the epidemic. The death toll from the virus on mainland China reached 2,000 on Feb. 18.

There were 72,436 confirmed cases of people infected with Coronavirus in mainland China as of Feb. 17, according to the National Health Commission with the death toll at 1,868.

If the short-term reductions last, annual emissions for the country will fall by just 1%. But there’s no guarantee that they will. China has plenty of spare capacity in both power generation and industries to ramp up output once the infection rate starts to come down and protections ease.

Research from BloombergNEF released Tuesday shows that, despite the erosion in China’s productivity, the country’s emissions could still increase due to an infrastructure-focused stimulus package being prepared by the government, which will require the country to continue burning coal and increase its use of cement and steel.

THREADS
covid-19 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71666-Coronavirus-(COVID-19)-Wuhan-Pneumonia)
China's Pollution Problem (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67175-China-s-Pollution-problem)

[heavens000]

I think this is a very urgent problem, since they are leaders in emissions of waste into the atmosphere. Even at the time when there was a pandemic of the corona virus, their cities were cleared of greenhouse gases, they had previously been wearing masks so as not to suffocate. In my area, apart from rubbish removal in birmingham (https://www.zerowastegroup.co.uk/birmingham-rubbish-removal), there are no more companies that could dump waste, and then they recycle garbage themselves.