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Breathing Beijing's Air Is the Equivalent of Smoking Almost 40 Cigarettes a Day
iONiUM writes: The Economist has a story about how bad the air quality is in Beijing. Due to public outcry the Chinese government has created almost 1,000 air quality monitoring stations, and the findings aren't good. They report: "Pollution is sky-high everywhere in China. Some 83% of Chinese are exposed to air that, in America, would be deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency either to be unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups. Almost half the population of China experiences levels of PM2.5 that are above America's highest threshold. That is even worse than the satellite data had suggested. Berkeley Earth's scientific director, Richard Muller, says breathing Beijing's air is the equivalent of smoking almost 40 cigarettes a day and calculates that air pollution causes 1.6m deaths a year in China, or 17% of the total. A previous estimate, based on a study of pollution in the Huai river basin (which lies between the Yellow and Yangzi rivers), put the toll at 1.2m deaths a year—still high."
First, If you ever seen pictures in china of the pollution sadly that number isn't a big surprise
What's that pipeloads of tobacco per semifortnight?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
According to this report no Chinese city gets into the top 10 most polluted....
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/world...
According to this 1 Xi'an is the worst in the world. With Phoenix being the worst American city at 97th worst, LA is 107th, London 171st
http://www.numbeo.com/pollutio...
Where are you seeing that assumption made? As far as i can see, the article and summary both clearly make distinctions between conditions in Bejing and throughout the country as a whole.
For instance:
Pollution is sky-high everywhere in China. Some 83% of Chinese are exposed to air that, in America, would be deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency either to be unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups. Almost half the population of China experiences levels of PM2.5 that are above America’s highest threshold.
Agree that people should watch that documentary though - it's very good.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
The progressives are responsible for making our air clean. The big cities in America used to look like China is now, but the EPA was created to do something about it, and has succeeded admirably. People rag about the government overreaching, but this is one shining example of the government solving a big problem. Unfortunately, the EPA has been hamstrung by the conservative Congress, which seems to think that keeping our air from becoming all polluted again is too much of a price for industry to pay. Assholes.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Not that I expect anyone to RTFA of course, but the article is actually a report on Berkeley Earth's study on the 1500-site national air-reporting system, and most of the figures given are for all of China. The only specific Beijing reference is the "40 packs a day" metaphor.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Cigarettes are quite expensive, so getting 40 a day for free is not that bad.
That being said, Beijing is located is a small depression and that results in all the heavier particles in the air hovering over the city instead of dispersing over a larger area.
This effect is strongest in the winter, as I experienced it when I visited the city about a decade ago. However, there are spontaneous "clearing events" when sudden winds blow away the smoke, and then the difference in the quality of the air is quite striking.