China’s Air Problem Is Worse Than You Think

8/16/2015
Updated:
8/16/2015

The Chinese government is working hard to deal with its air, water, land, food-supply, and other sustainability challenges. So it’s a race between how hard the country is trying and how dire the situation is.

On this last front, a study out just now from Berkeley Earth in California, written by Robert Rohde and Richard Muller, deserves attention. It concludes that air pollution in China, familiar to everyone, in fact does more damage than is generally recognized. The study finds that as a result of this pollution, some 1.6 million Chinese people per year, or more dramatically well over 4,000 per day, are dying prematurely.

The magenta-colored zones, with average year-round pollution levels classified as "unhealthy" by the U.S. EPA and international standards, cover most of China's major cities, where many hundreds of millions of people live. (<a href="http://berkeleyearth.org/air-pollution-overview/" target="_blank">Berkeley Earth</a>)
The magenta-colored zones, with average year-round pollution levels classified as "unhealthy" by the U.S. EPA and international standards, cover most of China's major cities, where many hundreds of millions of people live. (Berkeley Earth)

 

The overview is here, and the scientific paper itself is here, full of charts and diagrams. The raw statistics behind their findings are available here. Conceptually such news is familiar, but the detail in the report is significant. The site is well laid-out and informative, and I encourage readers anywhere, but especially in China, to explore it.

This article was originally published on www.theatlantic.com. Read the complete article here.

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