You’re more likely to die from air pollution in India than China, study says

The country with the worst air pollution is not the one you’re thinking of

It’s a never-ending debate in Asia -- whose air quality is worse, China’s or India’s? A new study by Greenpeace released Monday is trying to answer that question.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Analysts looked at NASA satellite images and found that measurements of particulate matter -- the microscopic particles that invade your lungs and can cause cancer and heart disease -- improved impressively in China over the past few years while air quality in India has worsened, with 2015 ranking as India’s most polluted year on record. The satellite images showed that the levels of PM2.5 particles decreased by 17 percent in China from 2010 to 2015 and 15 percent in the United States while rising 13 percent in India, the study found. For the first time, Greenpeace found, the average Indian citizen was exposed to more particulate matter than the average Chinese. The images below from Greenpeace show China's air quality worsening, then improving -- while India's has steadily worsened: The study also found that the average annual PM2 level for India's capital, New Delhi, was also higher than in Beijing -- an average of 81 for Beijing, 128 for Delhi and 12 for Washington, D.C. China has made a concerted effort to address its air pollution problem in recent years after widespread public outcry over filthy air that put pressure on the government to release better pollution data. The Greenpeace study credits China’s national pollution action plan launched in 2013 for its “impressive” improvement. That included tightening emission standards for coal-fired power plants and heavy industry and increasing emissions monitoring and enforcement.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico However, the study notes that pollution levels in China remain “alarmingly high.” Meanwhile, in India, public outrage has only just begun to coalesce around the problem. Indian newspapers have run high-profile series on air pollution in recent months and the Delhi government has instituted an odd-even day driving plan this winter to control the worsening air.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The study suggests that India should put in place a pollution action plan that sweeps from Punjab to West Bengal in the northern part of the country, where pollution is the worst, enforce compliance for coal-fired power plants and institute air quality monitoring systems for all major urban centers. India has a dearth of online monitoring systems in place in its cities -- only 39 such stations compared to 1,500 in China, 770 in the United States and 1,000 in Europe, the study found. **Read more:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico India launches its own Air Quality Index. Can its numbers be trusted?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Beijing’s air is getting slightly better — here’s how and why    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Letter to Obama: Don’t be fooled if Beijing’s skies are blue    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

The most polluted city in the world isn’t Beijing or Delhi

We say "probably" here for two reasons. First, not all cities collect good enough data to be measured (a problem in itself). And secondly, it depends on how you measure it. When studying air quality, scientists look at the size of particles found in the air. Generally, a lot of attention is placed upon particles of a PM2.5 size, which is around one-30th the size of a human hair. These particles are particularly worrying because they have the ability to enter lungs and blood tissue and cause serious health problems. However, you can also measure larger particles in the air. At PM10, the particles are coarser, though they can still be inhaled and cause health problems. If you look at WHO's PM2.5 data, the Iranian city of Zabol comes out on top. This city, which has a population of more than 100,000, sits on the border with Afghanistan in Iran's east. The city is known for the "120 day wind," a lengthy dust storm through the hot and dry summer. Zabol is followed by Gwalior and Allahabad, two Indian cities, while Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital and largest city, comes in fourth.   Zabol also appears in the PM10 top 10, surrounded by cities from Pakistan and Nigeria as well as those from Saudi Arabia and India. In this ranking, Delhi comes in 25th and Beijing 153rd.

Air pollution now kills more people than high cholesterol

The Lancet recently unveiled a major overview of global health risks — and one of the most eye-catching papers highlighted just how deadly air pollution has become over the past two decades. In 2010, 3.2 million people died prematurely from outdoor air pollution, mainly in Asia, and mainly from soot and other pollutants from diesel cars and trucks. That means outdoor air pollution is now a bigger health risk than high cholesterol — and, along with obesity, one of the fastest-growing health risks in the world. (Air pollution only killed about 800,000 people worldwide in 1990, although measurements were much cruder back then.) The Lancet study also found that indoor air pollution, largely from smoky coal- or wood-burning cook stoves in countries in Africa, and in India, caused some 3.5 million premature deaths in 2010. That number has tumbled over the past two decades, but it's still high. Efforts to promote cleaner-burning cook stoves in the developing world have been fairly sluggish, although the problem has attracted plenty of global attention in recent years. So will the pollution problem get worse or better in the years to come? A big reason that soot and other pollutants killed 2.1 million people in 2010 is that China and India are growing so quickly. On the whole, that's terrific news. But it means more people can afford to drive cars and trucks in cities like Beijing and Delhi. That means more fine particle pollution that can bury deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. High levels of soot have been linked to everything from asthma to heart attacks to, yes, death. That trend won't stop anytime soon. China currently has one car for every 17.2 people. In the United States, there's one car for every 1.3 people. If China were to catch up with the U.S. car ownership rate, the country would field a billion vehicles all by itself. Still, that doesn't have to mean mass death from pollution. The usual argument is that environmental indicators typically get worse as countries grow. But when countries reach a certain point of development, its citizens will start demanding cleaner air and water and push for stricter pollution controls. This is known as the "environmental Kuznets curve" — though it's still not clear at exactly what point the curve breaks. Yet as Bryan Walsh points out, there are plenty of European cities with much higher rates of car ownership than Delhi and much less pollution. Cleaning up soot is perfectly doable; it just takes a bit of money. (Incidentally, there's a good debate about whether the environmental Kuznets curve applies to trickier environmental problems like global warming. Recently, Bill Blackwater wrote a long essay arguing that it doesn't.) In any case, while the new Lancet report talks a lot about death and all the things that are killing us, there's some good news too. As this map from New Scientist shows, life expectancy has soared since 1970 in most parts of the world — apart from the Caribbean, Lesotho (AIDS) and Belarus (heavy drinking):  So, it's true, cleaning up air pollution is an urgent public health problem. But in the grand scheme of things, it's a good problem to have.

An outdoor exerciser? Here’s what your lungs probably look like.

When a pathologist at Georgetown University’s medical school cut into the lungs of a cadaver during an autopsy and revealed blackened tissue, one of my medical students assumed that smoking must have contributed to the person’s death. No, the pathologist said; he’d seen such carbon-pocked lungs hundreds of times. “That’s what all our lungs look like.” The truth is that air pollution damages our lungs not only in places such as Beijing and New Delhi, where smoggy air and white masks have become a way of life for many. U.S. air may not look as gritty, but Americans living in high-density areas, even suburban ones, also face plenty of negative health consequences from pollution, including heart attacks and asthma. A recent study found that 5.5 million people worldwide die prematurely every year because of dirty air, much of it from power plants and,especially in the United States, automobiles. Particulate and gaseous pollutants in the air have been blamed for as many as 10 percent of deaths in Los Angeles. So what are we breathing that’s causing such damage? Our air has two forms of pollution; one of them includes gases such as ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Of these, ground-level ozone is a major respiratory culprit, created when sunlight interacts with exhausts from vehicles and other machinery. Ozone is a potent lung irritant and is partly responsible for the rise in rhinitis and asthma worldwide. The warmer the air, the greater the reaction. Recent studies have determined ozone to be the pollutant most closely associated with increased mortality. The other form of pollution is tiny particulate matter — from automobile fumes, power plants and smoke from chimneys and forest fires — that lodges in the lungs and pretty much stays there. Particulates are what blacken our lungs over time, but both ozone and particulates cause breathing problems and shorten life spans by making lungs sensitive to allergic substances, causing inflammation and reducing lung function. These changes trigger asthma attacks, worsen illnesses such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, and are even linked to the development of lung cancer. The smaller particulates are, the more dangerous their effect. One common particulate goes by the scientific name PM 2.5. Its tiny dimensions — it’s often described as being one-thirtieth as wide as a hair — allow it to enter the deepest recesses of the lungs. We take in millions of them with each breath. PM 2.5s are made up of sulfate, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, black carbon, mineral dust and water. While some of these components occur naturally in the air, others come from burning coal and wood, fuel combustion and other human activities. No one knows exactly which of these man-made ingredients are most toxic to the lungs. What is clear is that the particles’ minuscule size allow them to stay in the air for long periods, travel great distances and, worst of all, evade the body’s defenses. They pass right by the small hairs in our nose and bronchial tree, which are better suited for trapping larger particles. The Environmental Protection Agency and the American Lung Association are among several organizations with websites that provide information on ozone and particulates in many U.S. cities. For 2014, the District received an “F” grade from the ALA — eighth-worst in the country — for ozone levels, calculated from hourly readings at monitoring sites over a three-year period. (Recent studies have determined ozone to be the pollutant most closely associated with increased mortality.) The District received a “D” for particulates. Los Angeles topped the list for worst ozone pollution and the area around Fresno, Calif., ranked highest for particulates. Some U.S. cities fared better: Anchorage had the lowest level of ozone pollution in the country, whereas Prescott, Ariz., had the lowest levels of particulates. The cleanest city in the world was Calgary, Alberta. Meanwhile, clean-air tourists would do well to steer away from Linfen, China, the world’s most polluted city. Whose health is most at risk? People older than 65, who tend to have less efficient lungs and immune systems, and children, who spend more time outdoors and have higher respiratory rates than adults, are particularly sensitive to ozone, as is anyone with asthma, COPD, cardiovascular disease or diabetes. People of all ages living near high-traffic roads and other sources of pollution, such as smokestacks, have been found to have more health issues, including cardiovascular risk and lung disease, than other people. What about athletes in urban areas who inhale automobile exhaust while running and cycling outdoors? Exercisers inhale particles through the mouth, bypassing the nasal filtration system, and often draw the inflammatory particles deep into the lungs. Exercise, however, is definitely good for your cardiovascular system and probably offsets some of the cardiovascular health risks of living in a polluted environment. What should urban dwellers do? If you’re not going to move to Anchorage or Canada, you can still protect yourself and limit your contribution to air pollution. The ALA suggests driving less and reducing the use of gas-powered tools, air conditioning and wood-burning fireplaces. It also recommends staying indoors on high-pollution days and avoiding exercise near zones of heavy traffic. Short of using cans of imported air from Canada, as we now hear is all the rage in China, some people have suggested using the face masks many in Beijing now wear as a barrier to toxic air. Such masks, which were popularized in Japan after the 1918 flu, have continued to be used worldwide in surgical settings and have served as a public health measure to protect against airborne infections. Some masks — labeled N95 and N99 — provide protection against most of the worrisome airborne particles. However, they can be uncomfortable to wear — they’re thicker and less flexible than a surgical mask — and reduce airflow, creating a sensation of difficulty breathing. I’ve tried an N95 respirator mask for running and an N95 plain face mask for cycling. In both cases the exertion made breathing more difficult. And because the masks make you look like a giant irradiated bug, I drew incredulous stares when I wore one biking down a congested part of River Road in Bethesda. Some companies have addressed this problem by attempting to recast masks as hip urban fashion statements. Others have created personal environmental monitors, which keep track of air quality and communicate with a smartphone to help you figure out when to don a mask. These masks and apps may help give a sense of control, but they’re not long-term solutions. That’s why some organizations are focusing on the respiratory health of future generations. We can’t get rid of those black spots dotting our lungs; our best bet is to keep young lungs pink in the first place. **Read more:** What it’s like for me living in Beijing’s polluted air Reports says more than 5 million people die prematurely due to air pollution The staggering economic cost of air pollution Air pollution is killing 1.6 million people a year in China

How the world’s poorer countries breathe worse air, in charts and maps

Unfortunately, if worthiness is measured by being able to live in a world where the air one breathes does not spread disease and blacken one's lungs, then we are far from it.  Nearly 2 million of the deaths brought on early by pollution are in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region, according to the report, compared with 333,000 in Europe and the Americas. High-income countries went through a phase of industrialization that heavily polluted their cities, too. A century ago, the major manufacturing centers of the United States and Europe were plagued by smog, belched out by the largely unregulated factories and industries on which nations built their economic power. In the "developing world," countries such as China and India are now industrializing in similar ways. On their way to lifting millions, if not billions, out of poverty, and in their quest to provide jobs, electricity and infrastructure for booming populations, regulations on industry are lax, and the mining of coal, for instance, remains a main source of power — and pollution. In the following maps, concentrations of particulate matter in the air — tiny bits of chemical and dust and smoke that are microscopic — are shown across different regions of the world, using WHO data. Dozens of scientists contributed to the WHO study, which took place over 18 months and used data from satellites, air-transport models and ground monitors in more than 3,000 urban and rural locations. The study focused on particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less in size, which in high concentrations can be very unhealthy, but it did not measure other potentially harmful elements in the air such as ozone and nitrous oxide. “Air pollution is a major cause of disease and death. It is good news that more cities are stepping up to monitor air quality, so when they take actions to improve it, they have a benchmark,” said Flavia Bustreo, WHO assistant director general for family, women and children's health. “When dirty air blankets our cities, the most vulnerable urban populations — the youngest, oldest and poorest — are the most impacted.” The pollution concentrations shown in the maps above are caused by a variety of factors, some human-made and others not. For instance, in the map of the Middle East and North Africa, much of that pollution is caused by dust storms that are common in the deserts that make up much of that region. In the map of the Eastern United States, it is clear that urban centers as well as regions with large manufacturing and mining industries suffer from the worst concentrations of bad air. There are some positive trends, but they are mostly from high-income countries. According to the WHO, "more than half of the monitored cities in high-income countries and more than one-third in low- and middle-income countries reduced their air pollution levels by more than 5% in five years." The air-pollution crisis is most dire, however, in China's industrial heartland, and in South Asia's Indo-Gangetic Plain. The residents of China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh make up nearly 40 percent of the world's entire population.  With India's ratification of the Paris agreement, we have moved one large step closer to passing the threshold of countries representing 55 percent of global emissions needed to put the agreement into effect. The question of whether countries such as India and China can continue along their development trajectories while limiting or reversing air-pollution trends, though, is much larger than the Paris agreement. It rests on their governments, and governments around the world, coming together to promote alternative energy sources so that "developing" countries do not pollute the world as much as "developed" countries did on their way to where they are now.

Unbelievable photos of how bad Beijing’s air has gotten

Chinese children are being forced to stay inside and there's been a spike in hospital visits as Beijing has clouded over with some of the worst smog in history. And now, we have an aerial representation of Beijing's respiratory problems, courtesy of NASA. Here's what the air above China looked like on Jan. 3: And here it is on Jan. 14: It doesn't sound pretty: At the time that the Jan. 14 image was taken, ground-based sensors at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reportedly found levels of the smallest, most dangerous types of particulate matter, known as PM 2.5, at 291 micrograms per cubic meter of air. According to World Health Organization guidelines, any air with more than 25 micrograms of PM 2.5 per cubic meter is considered unsafe. The PM 2.5 particles, which come from burning fossil fuels and biomass, are especially deadly because they can enter the passages of the lungs. Over time, they can worsen medical conditions such as asthma or heart disease. The putrid air has caused an outcry on Weibo, China's Twitter, and even on state media. There also are reports that sales of air-monitoring smartphone apps have skyrocketed. But immediate relief is unlikely, and air pollution issues of this scale take decades to alleviate. "If there is any consolation to what Beijing had to endure," wrote the Economist's China blog, "It is that it should lend urgency to the public outcry, and help speed things in the right direction." _More from WorldViews:_ Why some Malians are happy about the arrival of the French, in charts   Russia is recovering from a giant hangover

Coal is king among pollution that causes heart disease, study says

Exposure to emissions from coal-fired power plants over a long period of time is significantly more harmful to the heart than other forms of carbon pollution, a new study says. The risk of death from heart disease, including heart attacks, was five times as high for people who breathed pollution from coal emissions over 20 years than for those who were exposed to other types of air pollution, according to the study’s findings. The burning of coal releases fine particles with a potent mix of toxins, including arsenic and selenium. “Our results indicate that, pound for pound, coal-burning particles contribute roughly five times as much to heart disease mortality risk as the average air pollution particle in the United States,” said George D. Thurston, a professor of population health and environmental medicine at New York University and lead author of the study. Thurston and the study’s 10 other authors said that their findings should end assumptions in previous studies that carbon “particles have the same toxicity, irrespective of their source.” And they said the findings show the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to strengthen regulation of power plant emissions standards — as part of the White House’s Clean Power Plan — does not go far enough. The EPA’s calculations for lowering air pollution with stricter coal emissions standards nationwide are wrong, the research shows, because the estimates are based on the assumption that particles from all sources of carbon pollution are equally toxic and carry the same risks. Windblown particles from dust in Phoenix are far less toxic than emissions from coal-burning power plants in Pittsburgh. And urban motor traffic in Los Angeles produces emissions that are about half as toxic as coal, Thurston said. “You have to look at the various sources,” he said. “If we want to clean particles, where should we start? We should start with the particles that are most toxic.” Thurston said governments across the world have taken clean-air models from the United States and applied them without considering that the level of danger is higher or lower depending on the pollution source. “In the Arab world, there are high levels of particle pollution, but they’re from windblown soil,” Thurston said. “You think those are the same as coal? They’re not.” The study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, was released Wednesday to coincide with the world climate talks in Paris. The EPA said in August that its plan would lower power plant carbon pollution that causes “the soot and smog that harm health, while advancing clean energy innovation,” according to its Web site. The agency estimated that it would help Americans avoid 1,700 heart attacks and 3,600 premature deaths. Nearly half of the nation’s state attorneys general filed lawsuits seeking to block the new regulations when they were finalized in September. Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia’s attorney general, called the plan “one of the most far-reaching energy regulations in this nation’s history.” Air pollution has been identified by the World Health Organization as a major health threat linked to heart disease across the globe. In the United States, it causes 1 in every 5 heart-disease-related deaths, according to the American Heart Association. The study relied on a trove of data collected between 1982 and 2004 by the American Cancer Society, which sent hundreds of volunteers to ask approximately 1 million people about their health. The coal study examined information collected from about 450,000 people who lived in areas where pollution exposure data was available. To reduce the number of people dying from air pollution worldwide, Thurston and his colleagues said there must be a stronger emphasis on reducing coal emissions. Aruni Bhatnagar, a University of Louisville professor of cardiovascular medicine and a volunteer with the American Heart Association, called the study’s findings surprising because of the long-held assumption in previous studies. Before now, there had been only talk, based on expert guesses, that coal emissions could be “more toxic than other particles,” Bhatnagar said.

More than 5 million people will die from a frightening cause: Breathing

About 5.5 million people around the world die prematurely every year from breathing polluted air, and the majority of those deaths are occurring in China and India, where factories and coal-fired power plants are fueling economic growth, according to a report released Friday. The authors said the findings show that disease from air and household pollution ranks as the number two cause of death worldwide. It comes in right behind smoking, which the World Health Organization says kills 6 million people annually. The research, part of an initiative to monitor the global burden of disease, is being presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington. Air pollution is made up of fine particulate matter from power generation, transportation and open burning. Household pollution is created by stoves that burn coal, wood and animal dung for cooking and heat, primarily in India and Africa. Both can lead to heart attacks and strokes, and the researchers found that nearly 1 million people die annually from these causes in China, more than a half-million die in India, and nearly 300,000 die in the United States and European Union countries. Although the report used 2013 data, co-author Dan Greenbaum, president of the nonprofit Health Effects Institute in Boston, noted that “these things don’t change overnight.” Last year’s death toll likely was similar, he said.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Chinese government is moving aggressively to improve air quality by forcing automobiles there to be equipped with cleaner technology, and power plants to lower the amount of particulates they spew. But gains are offset by the country’s drive to become a world economic power — through the very industries it seeks to better regulate. The United States, where yearly deaths from air pollution fell from 119,000 to 79,000 between 1990 and 2013, and the European Union, where they fell from 350,000 to 218,000 over the same period, stand as models for China, Greenbaum said. The United States continues to push for lower emissions from automobile traffic and has imposed stronger rules on industry, such as cement plants and those that generate electricity from coal. *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico China’s worsening air pollution is a problem far beyond its borders, with previous studies showing that it marginally increases air pollution on the U.S. West Coast. At the AAAS meeting, Greenbaum said, a Chinese scientist is set to present an analysis showing that “coal is by far the largest health burden, about 50 percent of the problem.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Report co-author Qiao Ma, a doctoral student at the School of Environment at Tsinghua University in Beijing, found that outdoor air pollution from coal contributed to about 366,000 Chinese deaths in 2013. According to her projection, between 990,000 and 1.3 million people there will lose their lives prematurely by 2030 unless ambitious pollution-reduction targets are introduced. “Our study highlights the urgent need for even more aggressive strategies to reduce emissions from coal and from other sectors,” Ma said in a statement. Air pollution is “by far the leading environmental risk factor for disease,” Michael Brauer, another co-author and professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health in Vancouver, said in the statement. “Reducing air pollution is an incredibly efficient way to improve the health of a population.” India has moved to reduce household pollution, but not with the same urgency as China. “It’s harder to solve the household problems because these are poor families that can’t convert to electric stoves,” Greenbaum said. “People who are in the kitchen, women primarily, are exposed to extremely high levels of pollution.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But Indian officials are intent on regulating what they can, said Chandra Venkataraman, a professor of chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, who analyzed pollution there as part of the report. Emission standards legislation has been introduced in the wake of the international climate agreement reached last December in Paris. And policies are in place to move the country from coal-burning heavy industry. Venkataraman said officials also want to end a standard Indian practice of widespread burning to clear agricultural fields. As part of a national cook-stove initiative, about 110 million households now have stoves that burn bio-matter, she said in a telephone interview. “But it’s not a centralized problem, it’s all over the country. And it’s not just a technological problem, it’s an issue of awareness.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Air pollution is dangerous. But here’s why you should still walk and bike outdoors

Reading all of this, one might justifiably wonder whether a habit of outdoor walking or biking — for instance, to work every day — does more harm than good. Science has also repeatedly underscored the value of physical activity, but the idea that polluted environments could undermine that may complicate the equation.  “Cycling and walking make sense for almost everyone and almost everywhere,” said Marko Tainio, a researcher with the University of Cambridge who led the research, recently published in the journal Preventive Medicine. The work was conducted in collaboration with scholars from Spain, Brazil, Switzerland and Britain.    Returning to PM2.5, at levels which are very close to the global average level of fine particulate pollution in urban areas, the research finds that the health benefits of walking and cycling “far outweigh” any pollution risks — and that’s even if you spend many hours outdoors engaging in these activities. It was only when levels of particulate matter exceeded 100 micrograms per cubic meter of air that things began to get potentially dangerous, to the extent of outweighing the health benefits of outdoor activity. But even here, up to an hour and a half of cycling was beneficial, the study found, as was up to 10 hours of walking. The research thus suggested that if there’s anyone at risk who is engaging in active outdoor activities, it may be bike messengers in particularly polluted cities. In these super-polluted places, it was also notable that cycling posed more dangers than walking. “Where the risks become bigger is after 45 minutes per day of cycling,” Tainio said. “Walking is more safe in this context.” It is important to note that the analysis assumes a person is not just walking or cycling for one day but rather doing so regularly over a year and being steadily exposed to average levels of air pollution in a given place over a similarly expansive time period. The consequent health effect examined in the study was not for particular disease but rather overall mortality, or the chance of dying prematurely from all causes. The study also assumed that walking or cycling was displacing an amount of time spent at home, where people are also exposed to air pollution in the ambient air. However, if cycling was displacing driving, then the benefits were even greater for health, because air pollution tends to be more concentrated near roads where there are lots of vehicles. The new research, Tainio noted, sets the stage for a positive feedback: If people bike or walk more, even in polluted cities, it gets cars off the road — which in turn makes cities less polluted. None of this, of course, in any way lessens concerns about just how bad for health air pollution is. “Air pollution is a major issue,” Tainio said. “We just want to say that it’s not a reason not to exercise.”

WHO: Global air pollution is worsening, and poor countries are being hit the hardest

Air pollution is growing worse in urban areas across much of the globe, hitting the poorest city dwellers hardest and contributing to a wide range of potentially life-shortening health problems, from heart disease to severe asthma, according to the World Health Organization.  The WHO said 98 percent of urban areas in “low- and middle-income countries” with populations of more than 100,000 fall shy of the group’s air quality standards. “Urban air pollution continues to rise at an alarming rate, wreaking havoc on human health,” Maria Neira, director of WHO’s department of public health, environment, and social determinants of health, said in a statement. The figures released Thursday were part of an updated WHO global database of air pollution for cities and smaller human settlements across the world. The database now covers 3,000 cities, towns and villages in 103 countries, listing average annual levels of particulate matter in the air. This includes tiny particles less than 2.5 micrometers in size, known as PM2.5, which are thought to be the most deadly because they can find their way deep into a person’s lungs. The alarming result: 80 percent of people in cities and towns whose air quality is actually monitored are breathing air containing these particulates at concentrations higher than the WHO’s recommended level. Air pollution in urban areas as a whole was 8 percent worse in 2013 than it was in 2008. (Not all places have good enough data available, especially in much of Africa).  “The results are not surprising,” said Marko Tainio, an environmental health researcher at the University of Cambridge, by email. “In high-income countries air pollution levels are (in global comparison) lower and getting (slowly) better. In [the] developing world, especially Asia, concentrations are high and are not improving (in some cases getting even worse). Globally the burden of air pollution is focused on countries like India and China due to combination of high pollution levels and large population.” Among global megacities – which WHO defines as any city that’s home to more than 14 million people – the Indian capital of Delhi received the worst ranking, with PM10 levels of 229, representing larger particles than PM2.5 (where levels stood at 122). “The WHO data illustrates just how immediate the problem of air pollution is and that we need radical and rapid action to tackle the twin issues of air pollution, which is killing urban citizens, and climate change, which threatens people’s lives today and in the future,” said Mark Watts, executive director of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, which focuses on local level ways of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Particulate air pollution in cities emerges from many sources, ranging from smokestacks to automotive tailpipes. Public health officials say that as urban air quality declines, people living in cities face increased risks of heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and acute respiratory illnesses, such as asthma.    “They’re so small that they can actually get deep into the lungs, into the alveoli, and get into your bloodstream,” George Thurston, a professor of environmental medicine and population health at New York University’s School of Medicine, told the Post at the time. The news isn’t all grim, though.

Survey: The bigger your impact on the planet, the less guilty you feel about it

One frequent view of environmentalism is that it's mostly rich Europeans and Americans who are wringing their hands about sustainability and organic farming and climate change and the rest. Meanwhile, over in China and India, it's all hard-headed realism, with people worried primarily about economic growth. Environmental guilt, the argument goes, is a luxury only the wealthy can afford. But according to a new survey (pdf), the exact opposite may well be the case. National Geographic and GlobeScan recently polled some 17,000 people in 17 countries around the world about both their consumption habits and "green guilt." And, as it turns out, the most eco-conscientious consumers were in the developing world, in places like China and India. And these countries tend to have the _most_ green guilt. Meanwhile, those consumers with bigger environmental footprints — in countries such as the United States, Germany and Canada — felt the least self-concscious about their habits. Here's the chart:  The "Greendex score" ranks the environmental impact of individuals on a variety of metrics, from housing to transportation habits to food to consumer goods. Obviously, wealth matters a lot here. A middle-class German who can afford to buy a car and eat plenty of steak is going to produce more carbon emissions and have a bigger impact on the planet than, say, a poorer Chinese worker who still has to make do with a bicycle and fish. So the average person in a developed country will have a bigger impact on the planet. Granted, China and India as a whole have a very large impact on the world's resource use and atmospheric carbon concentrations — precisely because there are so many people in each country, even if their average footprints are smaller. So perhaps that accounts for some of the guilt. Meanwhile, here's another interesting graph. The average survey respondent in China and India is much more pessimistic about the fate of the planet than the average Canadian or American:  Nothing like that unabashed American optimism! Then again, even if a big chunk of people around the world are fatalistic about the world's environmental problems, they're still trying to improve. The report notes that five countries saw an uptick in green behavior in 2012 (this could be anything from recycling to using public transit to eating a less carbon-intensive diet), with the largest uptick seen in China. (Link via the Economist's Graphic Detail blog.)

China wrestles with stubborn air polluters

Early on in Beijing’s winter of pollution-wracked discontent, one of China’s biggest power companies, Huadian, turned off the coal scrubbers at its Datong plants and let emissions of sulfur dioxide, a leading cause of acid rain and respiratory illness, soar to more than four times government standards. Huadian saved money by turning off the scrubbers, which suck up power. What’s more, Huadian falsified paperwork and sold its electricity at a premium rate that the government offers to power plants with low emissions. Regulators caught the company. Twice. Beijing is downwind of Datong, and coal-fired power plants like Huadian’s are just one of the culprits for the extreme bout of air pollution here over the winter, when the city’s air-quality index went off the charts that regulators use elsewhere. At a level of 755, U.S. Embassy readings in mid-January were more than twice what the Environmental Protection Agency says is so “hazardous” that people should avoid going outdoors. The severity of the pollution — extreme even by Chinese standards — has rattled Chinese leaders. While they have, on occasion, closed factories and restricted traffic to clear the air for special events such as the 2008 Olympics, so far they have lacked the will or the capacity to reduce air pollution on a sustained basis. But as people rushed to buy air filters and flooded China’s Web sites with complaints, the state-run People’s Daily said in a Jan. 14 front page editorial, “the fog and haze obscured our line of sight, but it made us see the urgency of controlling environmental pollution.” Chinese officials recently told World Bank President Jim Yong Kim that Beijing’s winter air crisis had “really changed the public discussion” about climate change and pollution. “In China, I sat down and not five minutes into my conversation with Premier Li Keqiang, he said, ‘We want to work with you on urbanization,’ ” Kim said in an interview. “We are working day and night with a huge team to come up with a plan to come up with clean, livable cities. The Chinese want to do it. . . . This is a huge issue with them.” But while the government has vowed to step up enforcement of existing regulations, clamping down on polluters is a difficult task. Maximum fines are minimal, and evasion is rampant. In this respect, China’s command-and-control economy has more commands than control. The war on air pollution is being waged on three fronts: policing big coal and industrial plants like Huadian’s, enforcing standards on thousands of small boilers and dealing with the rapidly growing fleet of cars and trucks, which emit the small particles most harmful to human health. As China’s economy booms, so do electricity needs. Zhou Xizhou, director of the energy consulting firm IHS CERA in China, estimates that the rate of coal plant construction has slowed from about two a week to a still-daunting one a week — and will keep that pace for five or six more years. That’s roughly equal to adding the coal-fired capacity of Texas and West Virginia combined every year. Coal’s share of China’s new power generation has dropped, but it still generates about three-quarters of the country’s electricity. Some experts say China’s pollution problems could be reduced with regulations and equipment already in place. “Eighty percent of the coal-fired units in the country have sulfur scrubbers,” Zhou said. “Whether people run them is another question.” An episode last year illustrates Zhou’s point. Like the Huadian example, this one is on the Web site of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, which has compiled data on more than 4,000 firms, including 800 of the country’s biggest polluters. In February 2012, a big electric power generator, Huaneng, switched off coal scrubbers at its Pingliang power complex in Gansu, and let emissions soar past permitted levels on at least two days. Because Huaneng was a repeat offender, irritated regulators imposed an especially severe fine of about $13,000. Given the energy saved by not running the scrubbers, Huaneng was probably saving more money than that every day. In November, the same plant was caught violating emissions standards again and was fined once more. Small boilers used to power or heat urban buildings pose similar problems, but are harder to monitor. The pollution spike last winter galvanized many government agencies. Starting Jan. 28, Beijing’s Environmental Protection Bureau fined a property developer three times in less than a month to force it to put antipollution equipment on boilers being used to heat 80,000 homes. The developer, Beijing Dalong, is owned by the city’s Shunyi district government, which has $1.6 billion in assets. But the company had failed to install or use equipment to capture potent pollutants that were spewing from its coal-fired boiler. There are thousands of boilers in Beijing like the Shunyi boilers, according to Zhou, and monitoring them all is nearly impossible. And, as the Shunyi case shows, government regulators are facing a host of recalcitrant companies, many of them owned by or in cahoots with local governments. The proliferation of cars is also fouling China’s cities. Yale Zhang, managing director of consulting firm Automotive Foresight, predicts that the number of vehicles per thousand people could quadruple over the next two decades. Fuel efficiency could be higher, but so could the quality of gasoline. China’s refineries have not invested enough to meet government standards for cleaner fuels. On April 25, a government inspection board released the results of a spot check: Fifteen of 120 gasoline samples and five out of 60 diesel samples in 13 provinces failed to meet standards for sulfur, benzene or other contaminants. By some estimates, China’s gasoline contains around 20 times the U.S. limits on air pollutants. China’s refineries have complained that they don’t have the money to invest because they have been importing crude oil at world prices and selling refined products at state-controlled prices. Sinopec, the world’s second-largest refiner, recently reported $1.8 billion in operating losses from its refining division in 2012. Recently, the government raised retail gasoline prices and ordered refiners to make upgrades. But for years, says Fred Zuliu Hu, chairman of the investment firm Primavera Capital Group, “the government took a lax attitude and turned a blind eye because its own policy made reform fundamentally unprofitable.” Even now, China’s government is entwined with state-owned behemoths that it has trouble regulating or punishing. Chinese oil industry officials dominate the boards that set fuel standards. A key standard-setting technical committee on petroleum products falls under the research institute of Sinopec, which owns nearly half of China’s refineries. Of the committee’s 37 members, only two have backgrounds in environmental protection. According to China Chemical Industry News, 90 percent are from the oil industry. Not surprisingly, the national boards have not set a strict nationwide standard. Beijing has adopted the most stringent European standard, limiting sulfur emissions to 10 parts per million. Shanghai, the Pearl River Delta and Jiangsu limit emissions to 50 parts per million. But the most common standard in the rest of China limits sulfur emissions to 150 parts per million — five times the U.S. limit. Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing, says the only way to bring about change in the highly polluting energy and industrial sector is for groups such as his to publish violations and galvanize customers, neighbors and others to bring pressure for change. “We need stakeholders to come together,” he said. “We cannot rely simply on the government agencies.”

Beijing residents rethink life in the big smoke

BEIJING — A winter of terrible air pollution in Beijing is likely to be followed this summer by an exodus of expatriates fleeing the Chinese capital, according to senior executives, diplomats and businesses that cater to the expat community. But it is not just foreign residents who are contemplating leaving, and it is not just a couple of months of hazardous smog that has persuaded them to go. As in other large Chinese cities, such as Guangzhou and Shanghai, Beijing’s residents are mostly from other parts of the country and as they are gradually allowed to learn more about the health effects of chronic pollution, many are having second thoughts about life in the big smoke. At least among the more educated and wealthier segment of society, strategies for leaving Beijing have become a popular topic on Sina Weibo, the largest of China’s Twitter-like microblog platforms. One user wrote: “One of my close colleagues has finally escaped Beijing. With expensive housing, expensive goods, terrible pollution and expensive health care, he decided to run off to a city where the pressure will be much less — London.” Air pollution has always been bad in China’s mega-cities, but in recent months in northern China, readings of the most harmful types of toxic smog have reached 40 times the level recommended by the World Health Organization. More important, real-time information is available that allows anyone with a computer or smartphone to match hard data with the choking clouds they can see and smell in front of them. After the U.S. Embassy began in 2009 collecting data on the fine particulate matter known as PM2.5 that is the most dangerous to human health, a public campaign eventually forced the Beijing government to do the same. Hourly readings are now available online from both sources. That access to information has transformed air pollution from a nonissue just two years ago into a source of deep public anger at a time when the damaging health effects of pollution are also becoming clear. A World Bank study in 2007 estimated that each year China sees 400,000 premature deaths due to outdoor air pollution — a finding so explosive that the government tried to suppress it at the time. However, one of the scientists who worked on that study, Pan Xiaochuan of the Peking University School of Public Health, said the true figure is probably far higher because the methodology used in the report was conservative. Indeed, a survey released last week that looked at causes of deaths worldwide found that outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, accounting for almost 40 percent of the global total. The study was conducted by a group of universities and the WHO. “China is starting to experience the long-term health damage caused by pollution, and the past 10 years have been like a period of concentrated outbreak,” Pan said, pointing to increasing rates of lung cancer and digestive diseases across the country. Pan says that lack of data prevents scientists from obtaining an accurate measure of the true health impact of the air pollution that blankets eastern China. That information vacuum is mostly due to government secrecy. With a few exceptions, most Chinese cities refuse to publicly disclose some of the most basic and important environmental information, such as pollution discharge data and records of administrative punishments handed out to polluters, according to an authoritative annual report published last week. The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing and the Natural Resources Defense Council in the United States have published an annual pollution transparency index covering 113 Chinese cities since 2009. This year, about 35 percent of the cities saw a drop in their transparency scores, an unprecedented reversal after years of improvement that organizers of the survey described as “alarming.” They attributed the increased secrecy mainly to local protectionism and the willingness of regional governments to sacrifice the environment in a myopic and ultimately self-defeating pursuit of economic growth. In a report published by state media last week, the Chinese government estimated the cost of environmental destruction in 2010 at a minimum of $230 billion, or about 3.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, based on only partial available data. That was three times the estimated losses in 2004. “A fundamental problem with [Beijing’s] current policies is that they are inconsistent with the need to reduce pollution to politically acceptable levels within an acceptable period of time,” Deutsche Bank economist Ma Jun wrote in a detailed recent study on China’s air pollution problem. On current trends, without a change in policy, China’s air quality will worsen by a further 70 percent by 2025 from the current often unbearable levels, thanks to a 60 percent projected increase in coal burning and a quadrupling in the number of cars on China’s roads, according to Deutsche Bank estimates. But the rising anger and the growing number of expats and local residents willing to give up economic opportunities in the Chinese capital and leave suggests that air pollution has now become an uncomfortable political issue for China’s unelected leaders. Given how sensitive the ruling Communist Party is to anything that undermines its legitimacy, many environmental activists are hopeful that the government will finally make environmental protection a top priority. In an early positive sign, China’s newly installed premier, Li Keqiang, promised at his first public news conference as premier in mid-March to do more to clean up pollution. “We will punish offenders without mercy and enforce the law with an iron fist,” he said. “It’s no good to be poor in a beautiful environment, but nor is it any good to be well-off and left with the consequences of environmental degradation.” **— Financial Times**

Beijing makes rare concession on pollution measure

BEIJING — In a rare bow to public pressure, the Beijing local government has begun using a more stringent measure for air quality, and the first publicly announced readings Thursday showed the air was “hazardous” in at least two areas of the polluted capital city. The release of the data followed online protests and complaints that the U.S. Embassy in Beijing was providing a more accurate gauge of Beijing’s air than the city government, which typically tries to downplay the pollution as mere “fog.” And it capped a week in which Beijing has been shrouded in a particularly thick, low-hanging haze of pollution, the result of too many cars and too many nearby factories burning coal. Several flights to and from the Beijing airport Thursday were canceled or delayed. Traffic has been backed up more than usual because of the low visibility, and several highways were closed. Parents have been keeping their children indoors. Residents have been racing to buy air purifiers, oxygen generators and face masks. In a bit of black humor making the rounds here, people joke that you can smell China’s GDP in the air. But the official reaction to the pollution problem provides a sharp illustration of the challenges facing authorities as they try to maintain China’s enviable levels of growth, while also meeting the demands of increasingly informed urban residents for a better quality of life — including clean air to breathe. The U.S. Embassy gauges the air quality from a monitor on its roof, and posts the results hourly on a Twitter account, BeijingAir. Postings over the past several days repeatedly declared the air “Hazardous” to those exposed to it for 24 hours, with several measurements so high as to be deemed “Beyond Index.” A respite came early Friday morning when pollution readings were deemed only “Unhealthy to Sensitive Groups” and then fell to “Moderate” levels. Residents long accustomed to a polluted, congested capital are starting to openly complain. “It's a fact that air pollution can damage your personal health,” said Wang Xi, 29, a computer engineer who said he has been riding a bicycle in the city for 10 years, first to school and now to work. He started wearing a high-tech mask after experiencing a sore throat. The capital sits ringed by mountains on its north and west, so when a haze of pollution lumbers in, it just sits, and sits, and sits, until either strong winds or rains come along to push it off to the east. Technically, the stuff in the air is “particulate matter,” defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as dust, dirt, soot and smoke that comes from cars and power plants, like those in the provinces that surround Beijing. According to a Jan. 8 report by the Xinhua News Agency, research by Beijing authorities found that 60 percent of the smallest particulate matter in the city’s air comes from coal burning, car emissions and industrial production; 23 percent from dust; and 17 percent from the use of solvents. “The major problem is coal,” said Zhou Rong, a climate and energy campaigner for the environmental group Greenpeace, who wears a face mask when she goes outdoors and bought masks for her colleagues. “Cars are easier to control,” Zhou said. “It is really hard for any Chinese government body to say ‘no more coal.’ ” The U.S. embassy measures the smallest particulate matter, which is PM 2.5, meaning particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter — about 1/30th the width of a human hair, and so fine that they can lodge deeply in human lungs. The Beijing municipal government, with more than two dozen monitoring stations around the city, has long measured PM levels of 10 micrometers in diameter, much larger than what the embassy measures. This has led to huge discrepancies, with Beijing authorities routinely reporting “clear blue skies” and only “slight” pollution on days when the American mission is declaring the air hazardous by international standards and warning children and the elderly to stay indoors. The gap was so great that, according to a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, a Chinese official in 2009 tried to pressure the U.S. Embassy to stop making its readings public, saying the confusion could lead to “social consequences.” Over the past few months, more Beijingers — using their handheld devices and other means to access Twitter, which is officially blocked here — began closely following the U.S. figures. BeijingAir has been widely considered a truer reflection of what was in the air than the rosier government estimates. In December, even the party-run Global Times questioned the official numbers, and why the embassy’s appeared to be more accurate. “Most people just have huge distrust of the government,” Zhou said. This month, the local government said it had been collecting the finer measurements and would make them public. On Thursday, in its first release, the city’s meteorological office said the air posed hazardous conditions in two districts, Tongzhou and Fangshan. According to Xinhua, Beijing officials also announced new steps to try to clean up the air, including preventing dust from drifting from the city’s myriad construction sites, and new regulations to control the release of industrial pollutants. What residents find most frustrating is the knowledge that the government is capable of cleaning up the air. It was done in 2008, before the start of the Beijing Olympics, when factories were shut down and tough restrictions were imposed on cars. Shanghai did the same around the time of the Shanghai World Expo last year, and Guangzhou cleaned up in time for the 2010 Asian Games. But as Zhou from Greenpeace said, “After these big events, the activity is reversed.” **More world news coverage:** \- Another writer sentenced as China’s crackdown continues \- EXCLUSIVE: Burmese leader says lasting reform is coming \- FP: Could North Korea make a turn toward democracy? \- FP: Inside a Changing Myanmar \- In France, vintners erase a notorious past \- Read more headlines from around the world

India launches its own Air Quality Index. Can its numbers be trusted?

After years of facing flak from global health experts for not doing enough to tackle worsening air pollution, India now says it will launch its own national air quality index in the next five years. The index will rank 66 Indian cities and provide associated health risks in a color-coded manner that can be understood by everyone. The move, officials say, could raise public awareness of an issue that many Indians often overlook, but also push them to demand higher quality standards and laws. “The index is meant to alert us, but it has to also drive us to action,” said Ashok Lavasa, secretary of the ministry of environment, forest and climate change, at an event in New Delhi on Friday to announce the launch. Earlier this year, a report by a Yale Univrsity research team showed that India ranked 174th of 178 countries in air quality, somewhere close to China and Pakistan.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Then came the World Health Organization, that said New Delhi’s air quality is the worst in the world, and that its annual average concentration of small particles was almost three times that of Beijing.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The reports prompted environmentalists here to call for stricter fuel emission standards across India. Officials here had at that time dismissed it as “biased.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico On Friday, India touted the launch of its own index. “There was a lot of hue and cry over claims made by some foreign people at that time that the air quality in Delhi was the worst,” said Susheel Kumar, chairman of the Central Pollution Control Board. “We want to come out with our own national air quality index. Our team of experts are second to none in the world.” Air quality has steadily worsened in the past two decades in India, caused largely by rapid industrial growth, use of coal and growing urban traffic. Experts say that air pollution is the fifth-largest killer in India. But producing credible pollution data is easier said than done. A newspaper article this week titled, “Why India’s Numbers on Air Quality Can't be Trusted,” said state pollution control boards routinely under-report data for fear of looking bad; use dodgy machines that generate unreliable data; and routinely use imported machines that do not work well in local conditions.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Mr. Obama’s trip to India leaves a clear deal on curbing emissions up in the air

THE U.S.-India relationship has often seemed more attractive in theory than in practice. The world’s two largest democracies share concerns about Chinese expansionism; throw in big economic potential and an active Indian immigrant population in the United States, and success seems guaranteed. Yet both sides have often felt disappointed in the results. So President Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi deserve credit for redoubling their efforts. In his second term, President George W. Bush made a strong effort to improve ties. It took Mr. Obama a while to pick up the baton, particularly as the previous Indian government flagged in energy. But with the energetic Mr. Modi in charge, Mr. Obama made his second state visit to New Delhi this week. There were some modest accomplishments — and, as usual, some hints of how much more might be done. One obvious area of potential cooperation was suggested by the sooty air in and around the capital while Mr. Obama was in town for lavish Republic Day celebrations. In some very back-of-the-envelope calculations, Bloomberg News estimated that exposure to air pollution during Mr. Obama’s short stay would shave six hours off his life. Unlike China, India doesn’t go to great lengths to conceal the extent of its pollution problem from its people. But as in China, India’s air pollution is harming health and contributing to climate change. The country recently became the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China and the United States. Mr. Obama and Mr. Modi made a bit of progress on this front. They agreed to proceed with an international treaty to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, short- lived but potent greenhouse gases in appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioning units. The leaders announced U.S. financing for Indian solar projects and new cooperation on air quality. They also trumpeted a “breakthrough” on a nuclear power deal Mr. Bush struck nearly a decade ago with a previous Indian government, ostensibly putting it back on track. However, it remains unclear whether the latest agreement will be enough to attract U.S. nuclear firms into the Indian market — or whether the Indian Parliament will have to act to convince them. U.S. companies reacted with caution. All of this falls far short of the clear emissions commitment and timetable that Mr. Obama struck with Chinese leaders last year. India has resisted calls to formally cap its carbon dioxide emissions, and that’s not a sustainable position for the world’s third-largest emitter. It needs to undertake a large- scale transformation of its chaotic energy sector. As new infrastructure goes in, it must be more sensitive to long-term environmental costs. But the small steps taken this week may lead to larger progress. As in the trade and security realms, the United States and India seem to have accepted that progress will be hard-won but worth the effort. **Read more about this topic:** Narendra Modi and Barack Obama: A renewed U.S.-India partnership for the 21st century Nicholas Burns: Obama’s opportunity with India and its new leader Fareed Zakaria: Is India’s bold prime minister bold enough? The Post’s View: India’s mixed climate change forecast

In China’s war on bad air, government decision to release data gives fresh hope

BEIJING — China’s Communist state is hardly known for its transparency. So when environmental groups appealed to the government last year to disclose official data on air pollution, they were not expecting much. “Way beyond our expectations, the government actually said yes,” said Ma Jun, head of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing. “I am quite amazed.” Since Jan. 1, the central government has required 15,000 factories — including influential state-run enterprises — to publicly report details on their air emissions and water discharges in real time, an unprecedented degree of disclosure that is shedding light on the who, what, when and where of China’s devastating environmental problems. The reporting requirement is part of a striking turnaround by China’s government, which is also publishing data on the sootiest cities and trying to limit the use of coal. The country’s appalling air is blamed for more than a million premature deaths a year, for producing acid rain that damages the nation’s agriculture, for driving away tourists and even for encouraging the brightest students to study abroad. Perhaps just as important, Beijing’s bad air has been making its Communist leaders lose face. Cleaning up China’s bad air will take years, even in the best of circumstances. The economy is dependent on coal, and there are many powerful interests involved. But activists say the new steps could at least represent the beginning of change. Linda Greer of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington says the reporting requirement for factories is the “biggest thing” China has done to address its pollution problems, and the most likely to produce results. “It brings them from the back of the pack globally, in terms of public information disclosure, to the front of the pack,” Greer added by telephone. “Inevitably it will strengthen the hand of regulators when they have bad air pollution days, to look at real-time data.” The seeds of the new transparency were sown by the U.S. Embassy when it began monitoring and publishing data on the fine particles in Beijing’s air that cause the most harm to human health — those that measure less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. Today, the air-quality readings by the U.S. Embassy and consulates around the country are a major topic on China’s microblogs and are widely watched through a smartphone app. The Chinese government initially pushed back against such disclosure, requesting in 2009 that the United States stop making public the data. But in 2012, Chinese authorities ordered cities to publish their own data on PM2.5 pollution levels; today, 179 cities issue real-time figures, while the Ministry of Environmental Protection has begun ranking the worst offenders. Those rankings have been dynamite. Everyone knew that heavy industry around Beijing was responsible for much of the capital’s bad air, but few people fully appreciated the scale of the problem. The ministry’s rankings showed that seven of the 10 most polluted cities in China in 2013 were in Hebei province, which surrounds the capital and is the center of the nation’s steel industry, as well as being a major glass, coke and cement producer. The data made one conclusion inescapable: Beijing’s pollution would never be tackled unless Hebei’s heavy industry was either cleaned up or shut down. The data disclosure was part of a new resolve in China’s government to confront its environmental problems, which have increasingly been the subject of protests. In September, the Chinese government unveiled a $280 billion plan to improve air quality, including limiting coal use and banning high-polluting vehicles. Under the plan, the Beijing-Tianjan-Hebei area is required to cut concentrations of PM2.5 fine particles by 25 percent by 2017. Of course, China has set and missed environmental targets before. And a real cleanup would involve significant social and economic costs, especially for Hebei. In 2012, the province produced more crude steel than the entire European Union and twice as much as the United States, according to the economics research firm Dragonomics. Its steel plants are not only massive polluters, but also massive tax and employment generators. No one in government wants a sea of unemployed factory workers at Beijing’s doorstep. Nevertheless, as part of a plan to cut overcapacity in heavy industry and limit pollution, China declared in October that it would reduce steel production by 10 percent, or 80 million tons, by 2017, with the bulk of the adjustment forced on Hebei. At provincial party congress meetings in January, cleaning up the nation’s air seemed to garner as much attention as preserving its economic growth. Beijing’s mayor promised to cut coal use as part of an “all-out effort” to curb air pollution, while Hebei’s governor threatened to sack party secretaries and industry managers if production of steel, glass and cement was even one ton above target. But it is the focus on individual factories that really gives environmentalists such as Ma reason for optimism. Although several provinces have yet to comply with the government’s edict to publish data, figures from Hebei are available and show factories brazenly flaunting limits on emissions. Ma is working with experts to design a phone app that could vividly expose the offenders, with factories meeting emissions targets showing up as blue and those breaking the law coded red. “What we aim to do, through public pressure, is help the environment protection bureau to enforce the law,” he said. In the United States, the Toxics Release Inventory, created in 1986, was one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s most successful programs, Greer said. China’s real-time disclosure program is bigger than anything the EPA has done, she said. On a recent day in Hebei, a thick carpet of gray smog blanketed the province and the smell of sulphur hung in the air. Near one factory outside the city of Tangshan, a worker on a bicycle angrily confronted journalists trying to photograph smoke and steam billowing into the air. “Recently journalists have been complaining about pollution, and all the factory owners have come under pressure,” he said. “We are very afraid they will lay us off. Each worker has a family to raise. We have no land, or other industry. Everything we have depends on steel factories.” But in the village of Wushizhuang, near the Zhengda steel works, locals were as angry as anyone about the pollution that was harming their lungs and ruining their crops — even though many had relatives employed in the surrounding factories. One man said the apples and pears in his orchard grew so black with grime that they could never be sold, while another wiped thick black dust off a car that he said had been washed the day before. Transparency obviously still has its limits in China — the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the provincial government in Hebei declined requests for an interview. But the new information may drive action. Greer said that officials could focus on forcing factories that were egregiously violating pollution limits to use control devices. “Making them run their pollution control devices is a lot easier than closing them down,” she said. “First, I would see what happens if they all ran those devices. We might see a meaningful reduction.”

What Delhi’s air pollution says about India and climate change

NEW DELHI –The thick winter haze that settles over Delhi – a nasty mix of smog, vehicle exhaust and smoke from cooking fires – abated somewhat when President Obama arrived in India this week for talks. A bit of rain came and cleared the air. Even so, the air quality index hovered around 200 when the president arrived at the viewing stand to watch India’s Republic Day Parade on Monday. That’s approaching what’s deemed a “very unhealthy” level of the microscopic 2.5 particulate matter, which causes respiratory disease and other ailments. _ **[Read: On Obama’s India visit, climate-change deal unlikely as Modi boosts coal production]**_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Americans were prepared. Delhi police had kept traffic to a minimum around the parade route, and the Embassy ordered 1,800 Swedish air purifiers in the weeks preceding the American delegations’ arrival. (It’s not clear whether any of those air filters actually made it into Obama’s special bullet-proof parade enclosure, as the Indian media had reported.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Bloomberg published a story Monday titled “Mr. President, World’s Worst Air is Taking 6 Hours Off Your Life,” which argued that Delhi’s toxic air was so harmful that it could shorten the president’s longevity.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “I think in Delhi, I think particularly at this time of the year, the air quality deteriorates,” John Podesta, counselor to the president, said to reporters in Delhi on Sunday. “But I think we weren’t concerned about bringing the president here for these meetings.” The air in New Delhi is the worst in the world, according to a World Health Organization report last year. Environmentalists say that efforts to control it – such as a switch to clean-burning natural gas for auto rickshaws – have made little long-term impact as the city has sprawled, eight coal-fired power plants chugged out more power and more than 7 million cars clogged the roads.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The situation is hardly better in in other parts of the country. Earlier this year, a report by a Yale University research team showed that India ranked 174th of 178 countries in air quality, somewhere close to China and Pakistan.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico On Sunday, the president and Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the two countries would work to battle pollution in India’s cities by implementing the Environmental Protection Agency’s international air quality forecasting system AIRNow. It’s part of an overall climate deal that includes a pledge for “concrete progress” on a pact to phase out a class of widely used refrigerants called hydrofluorocarbons, and support for solar energy initiatives to help India reach its goal of expanding its solar energy capacity to 100 gigawatts by 2022, an amount equal to the energy of about 100 nuclear power plants. Administration officials acknowledged that Modi-Obama did not produce a breakthrough like the deal with China on emissions last fall. But they said that it represented significant progress from a still-developing country that has long balked at agreeing to significant curbs on its emissions.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico They say the rapport that seemed to develop between Obama and Modi during this trip – Modi served Obama’s tea, and Obama kidded him about being attacked by a crocodile – may go a long way in helping the United States achieve a strong a global climate agreement in Paris with India’s help later this year.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “This signals that India sees the Paris agreement as a priority, and establishes a direct channel that could prove absolutely essential to delivering the final deal,” said Elliot Diringer, vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a Washington environmental group. At a meeting with chief executives Monday, Modi called for “global action on renewable energy,” saying the world “should take a lesson from past efforts to tackle hunger and many diseases.” However, other environmentalists expressed disappointment that the agreement between the two countries did not specifically target carbon emissions, especially as India doubles its coal production to try to meet unrelenting power needs. India is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind the United States and China.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, a professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, pointed to Modi’s somewhat short response to a reporter’s question about whether he felt pressured to agree to a China-style climate deal with the United States. “The sad thing for India is that while in rejecting a China-type deal, Modi said, 'There is no pressure on us from any country or any person, but there is pressure when we think about the future generations and what kind of world we want to give them,' " Pierrehumbert said. “In attempting to provide adequate energy, if India goes with coal to the extent in current plans, Modi will be leaving future generations in India — already one of the hottest populous countries — to suffer under oppressive warming so severe that, according to some projections, mammals (and that includes people) will not be able to survive outdoors,” he said. _Katie Zezima contributed to this report._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Air pollution in China is killing 1.6 million people a year, researchers say

In parts of China, simply breathing can be deadly. “When I was last in Beijing, pollution was at the hazardous level; every hour of exposure reduced my life expectancy by 20 minutes,” Richard Muller, a physicist at University of California – Berkeley, said in a press release. “It’s as if every man, woman, and child smoked 1.5 cigarettes each hour.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Muller is a co-author of a new paper in the journal PLOS One that takes an issue we’ve all heard of — the pollution that clogs the air over much of China — and examines its eventual consequences for human health.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _[PHOTOS: China is disappearing]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The results were striking: According to the study, air pollution is responsible for killing 1.6 million Chinese a year, about one sixth of all the premature deaths in the country. Both Muller and his co-author, physicist Robert Rohde, are researchers at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit devoted to analyzing global climate data.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Using data from China’s national air quality reporting system and two third- party sources, the scientists mapped the concentrations of six major pollutants across eastern China, where 97 percent of the country lives. Earlier studies have also put the annual death toll between 1 and 2 million, according to the Associated Press, but this is the first to use real data from the Chinese monitoring system.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico [ _Air pollution killing 4,000 in China a day, U.S. study finds_ ]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Though air quality varies month by month and day by day, Muller and Rohde found that 92 percent of the country’s population experience 120 hours or more of pollution levels considered “unhealthy” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. For more than a third of Chinese citizens, the air they breath averages “unhealthy” levels full time. In the U.S., the region with the highest level of particle pollution is Fresno-Madera, Calif., according to the American Lung Association. The area sees an average of 47 days a year when air quality hits “unhealthy” levels.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But 99.9 percent of the eastern half of China has a higher annual average for small particle haze than Madera, Rohde told the AP.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “In other words, nearly everyone in China experiences air that is worse for particulates than the worst air in the U.S.,” he said. The worst of the pollutants was particulate matter — tiny bits and pieces like soot, dust and smoke that hang in the air and infiltrate the lungs. Much of it comes from the burning of fossil fuels, but not always in the expected places. For example, despite the often intense focus on Beijing’s air quality problem (the U.S. Department of State runs a Twitter account that posts hourly reports on air quality in the city) much of the city’s pollution actually comes from areas to the southwest.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The researchers then plugged the Chinese and third-party data into a modeling framework from the World Health Organization that links pollution levels to deaths from fatal health problems like lung disease and stroke. That gave them the 1.6 million number, the equivalent of 4,000 deaths a day.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “It’s a very big number,” Rohde told the AP. “It’s a little hard to wrap your mind around the numbers.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In the U.S., roughly 200,000 early deaths are caused by air pollution every year, according to a 2013 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, air pollution is only the 10th most problematic risk factor for early death in the U.S., far behind diet, smoking, high body mass index and several others.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In China, the IHME found, ambient and household air pollution are the fourth and fifth most common risk factors for death, after only diet, high blood pressure and smoking.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The study comes as Chinese officials boast of progress on pollution ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Beijing. Old vehicles are being taken off the streets of Beijing, and two coal-fired power plants have been closed.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But because Beijing’s major sources of pollution are outside the city, those efforts might not be enough to clean things up before the winter games, Rohde warned.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico According to the AP, the research was praised by outside scientists. Jason West, an environmental scientist at the University of North Carolina, said he expects “it will be widely influential.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

More people died taking selfies in India than anywhere in world, study says. Way more.

Selfies and scholarship have finally intersected. And it was not good news for India.  The analysis — provocatively titled “Me, Myself and My Killfie: Characterizing and Preventing Selfie Deaths" — found that of 127 reported selfie deaths from March 2014 to September,"a whopping 76 deaths occurred in India alone!”   Researchers analyzed thousands of selfies posted on Twitter and found that men were far more likely than women to take dangerous selfies. It found 13 percent were taken in what could be dangerous circumstances, and the majority of victims were under the age of 24. The most common cause of death worldwide was “falling off a building or mountain,” which was responsible for 29 deaths. The second most second-most common being hit by a train, responsible for 11 deaths. “This trend caters to the belief that posting on or next to train tracks with their best friend is regarded as romantic and a sign of never- ending friendship,” the study noted. Most of the Indian deaths were water-related. The authors hope the study will serve as a warning of the hazards and inspire new mobile phone technology that can warn photo-takers if they are in a danger zone.

Fine-particle pollution linked to wider number of cancers, premature births

Researchers have long known that long-term exposure to fine-particle air pollution is implicated in lung cancer and heart disease, but a new study shows it is also associated with sharply higher mortality rates from cancers of the breast, the upper digestive tract and other organs. Between 1998 and 2011, scientists followed more than 66,000 Hong Kong residents, who were at least 65 years old at the time of enrollment, and their exposure to particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less. Such pollution typically forms when gases are emitted from cars, trucks, power plants and other industrial sources. Using fixed-site monitors and satellites, the researchers measured the concentration of particle pollution. They found that every increased exposure of 10 micrograms per cubic meter was associated with a 22 percent higher risk of dying from any cancer. For some cancers, the greater mortality risk was much more: 42 percent for the upper digestive tract and 80 percent for breast cancer. “The implications for other similar cities around the world are that [particulate pollution] must be reduced as much and as fast as possible,” said G. Neil Thomas, a researcher at the University of Birmingham in England and one of the co-authors of the study. John Groopman, an environmental-health expert at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study, agreed that the results of the study could be extrapolated to similar urban areas in high-functioning economies, such as Singapore, New York and Los Angeles. “We really need the research to understand what it is about the nature of these particles that is contributing to this.” Besides Thomas, the other main co-author was Thuan Quoc Thach, a scientific officer of the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health. The study was published Friday in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. The researchers said that the association between the fine particulate matter and cancer could be the result of damage to the body’s DNA-repair function, changes in the immune response or inflammation that triggers the growth of new blood vessels fueling the spread of tumors. Particulate matter is a complicated mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Once inhaled, the particles can cause lung, heart and other problems. A separate study by the Bloomberg School released Wednesday showed that even small amounts of air pollution appear to raise the risk of a condition in pregnant women linked to premature births. Researchers, in a study conducted in Boston, found that fine particles from car exhaust and other industrial sources can end up in the placentas of pregnant women. The greater the maternal exposure to pollution, the more likely that the women would have a condition called intrauterine inflammation, a leading cause of premature birth. The scientists said the study, reported online in Environmental Health Perspectives, suggested that EPA air-pollution standards may not be stringent enough to protect developing fetuses. “We found biological effects in women exposed to air pollution levels below the EPA standard,” said lead author Rebecca Massa Nachman, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Bloomberg School.

Air pollution around the world takes a staggering toll

DESPITE CALLING for clean air and clean water in his first speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, President Trump is reportedly aiming to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s staff by a fifth. Maybe Mr. Trump really believes there are enough “superfluous” EPA programs — such as, apparently, those addressing climate change — that his administration will throw out only bathwater and no baby. In reality, focusing only on the pollution challenges of the past, not those of the present or the future, ignores vast volumes of evidence on the ecological and human damage various types of pollution still cause. Imagine what the country would be like now if politicians had folded years ago to industry complaints about environmental protections now considered rudimentary. Actually, you may not have to imagine. A group of American and Canadian researchers recently released a global air pollution death toll, finding that two major types of air pollution were associated with 4.2 million deaths in 2015, which was a staggering 7.6 percent of all deaths. “Studies of long-term exposure to air pollution demonstrate that people living in more polluted locations die prematurely, compared with those living in areas with lower levels of pollution,” the report explained. The other side of the coin is that “when air quality improves, so does population health.” Fine particulates from fuel burning, among other things, penetrate the lungs and enter the bloodstream, encouraging heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, chronic lung disease and respiratory infections. The researchers concluded that exposure to particulate pollution was the fifth deadliest health risk of all 79 they studied, ranking behind high blood pressure, smoking and high blood sugar, and about matching high cholesterol — conditions many people upend their lives in order to mitigate. Air pollution exposure was deadlier than having high body mass index or alcohol use. No wonder the EPA has cited reductions in particulate matter to justify many Obama-era clean air regulations. Decades of environmental rules have resulted in relatively low — though not necessarily comfortable — particulate pollution levels in the United States and other developed nations. American air could still be cleaner; the researchers found that the nation’s levels of ozone — which also contributes to respiratory disease — were about the same as Nigeria’s and higher than China’s. Yet Americans do not know how good they have it. Fully 92 percent of the world’s population lives in areas where fine-particulate levels exceed World Health Organization guidelines. The misery is concentrated: Half of air pollution’s death toll was in China and India alone. Some particulate pollution is natural. But humans burning things — such as coal — is also a principle driver. Some of the pollution, such as that from archaic cooking and heating stoves, might abate with economic development. Yet if that very development relies on ramping up coal burning, people’s health will still be threatened. Beyond appreciation for effective environmental enforcement, there are at least two lessons. First, major developing nations such as China and India must find a way to grow their economies without substantially degrading their air quality. Second, if world governments continue to press major developing nations on cross-border pollution matters, they will be aided by popular internal demand for cleaner air. **Read more here:** Letters to the Editor: Environmental protection shouldn’t be a partisan issue The Post’s View: If Trump wants to gut climate regulations, he’d better have a good alternative Letters to the Editor: Pruitt will enable irreversible pollution of our atmosphere Eugene Robinson: Trump can’t deny climate change without a fight David Ignatius: Not even Trump can easily reverse our progress on climate change

Study: Pollution from Chinese factories is harming air quality on U.S. West Coast

BEIJING — Bad air from China is blowing across the Pacific Ocean and contributing to smog in the United States, according to new scientific research. And much of that air pollution is being caused by the manufacture of goods in China for export to the United States and Europe. “We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us,” said Steve Davis, a University of California at Irvine scientist and a co-author of the study. “Given the complaints about how Chinese pollution is corrupting other countries’ air, this paper shows that there may be plenty of blame to go around.” The paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday and, according to its researchers, is the first to quantify how much of the pollution reaching the West Coast of the United States is caused by production in China. A decrease in manufacturing in the United States in recent years has led to cleaner air in its Eastern regions. But pollutants wafting in from China have harmed the West, according to the study. Los Angeles has at least one additional day each year that exceeds federal ozone standards because of nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide emitted by Chinese factories. And as much as a quarter of the sulfate pollution on the West Coast can be tied to Chinese exports, the report says. China’s booming economy in recent decades has come with heavy environmental costs, generating international criticism. The study’s authors suggested in a statement that their findings could help spur the negotiation of clean-air treaties. “When you buy a product at Wal-Mart,” Davis said, “it has to be manufactured somewhere. The product doesn’t contain the pollution, but creating it caused the pollution.” The study is the work of nine scientists from three countries, including lead author Jintai Lin from Beijing’s Peking University.

The most shocking photo of Beijing air pollution I’ve ever seen

China's air pollution has been bad lately. Really, really bad. We've posted photos of it before, but the above shot really drives home how severe this has gotten.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Both photos were taken in Beijing by Bill Bishop, who runs an excellent all- things-China e-mail newsletter called Sinocism (go subscribe). The photo on the left shows his view on a clear day. That tall building is the mammoth China World Trade Center Tower III.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University On the right is a photo of the same view, taken late on Wednesday, U.S. East Coast time, or about 8 a.m. Beijing time. The 81-story skyscraper is all but invisible, shrouded by a layer of pollution so dense that even close-up objects are a blur. Air pollution is gauged by a measurement called particles per cubic meter of air, sometimes abbreviated PM2.5 because it measures particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers wide. The higher the PM2.5 rating, the more dangerous particles are in the high, the worse the air is for your health. To give you a sense of scale, there's a big controversy in Utah right now because the PM2.5 air pollution in Salt Lake City has sometimes hit as high as 69. That number is considered unhealthy. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, even adults should avoid all outdoor activities if the count hits 300. In Beijing and other Chinese cities, the air pollution rating can spend days hovering around 500.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The pollution has been largely sustained for several weeks now, getting so bad that even Chinese state media is starting to call for the country's leadership to reconsider its at-all-costs emphasis on economic growth. Here's a larger version of the photo, not that you can make much out in it: **Read more:Unbelievable photos of how bad Beijing’s air has gotten**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Chinese state media release a map showing the spread of ‘cancer villages’    *[WSU]: Wayne State University A Chinese Web censor snaps, goes on public rant    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Driving restrictions in Delhi may spark awakening about air pollution

NEW DELHI — On a recent night in India’s smoggy capital, Husain Akbar’s 6-month-old daughter, Inaara, woke up with labored breathing. Terrified, he and his wife raced the baby to a hospital, where she was treated. New Delhi’s terrible air — thought by some to be the worst in the world — caused the scary episode, the doctor said. Akbar later posted a heartfelt message on his Facebook page, asking friends to take seriously the government’s emergency air-quality-control measures, announced this month. “When your baby needs to be taken to the hospital in the middle of the night due to pollution related breathing issues, the reality of it all hits home like never before,” he wrote, urging: “Give the plan a shot. It might just improve things a little.” The Delhi state government announced the measures — which include a trial of an alternate-day driving program that is already causing controversy — after several days of smog blanketed the capital. It was the strongest official response yet to India’s worsening air pollution problem and one that environmentalists and activists hope will spark a civic awakening in the country, where outrage about toxic air is just beginning to grow. New Delhi, with 16 million people and 8 million vehicles, has the dirtiest air in the world, according to a 2014 World Health Organization study. “It’s become a very visible issue, and it is shaping public opinion,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director of research and advocacy and head of the air pollution and clean transportation program at the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi. “People are beginning to see and react to the problem. We are beginning to see government taking decision on how to move forward. It’s a very good sign.” In recent days, members of Parliament have paraded in air pollution masks and cycled to their offices to draw attention to the problem. Organizers of a Facebook group called “Delhi Smug in Smog?!?” wore masks at a picnic they held in a garden near the landmark India Gate, which has been barely visible in the dirty haze. There has been daily news coverage of the pollution-control measures, including a 15-day trial of a program that restricts residents to driving on odd or even days, based on license-plate numbers, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m starting Jan. 1. The state government aspires to reduce pollution by half, and it has announced plans to shutter a coal-fired power plant and upgrade emissions standards. India’s national environmental court last week temporarily halted registration of diesel vehicles in Delhi and asked central and state governments to stop buying diesel cars in the capital. “We had no choice,” Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said in a radio ad Tuesday in which he urged citizens to comply with the driving limits. “I know it will be hard, but to reduce pollution, we have to suffer a little.” Sales of anti-pollution masks as well as pricey air purifiers — “previously the sole preserve of the high and mighty, and foreign diplomatic missions,” the Times of India newspaper noted — soared. The Sweden-based company Blueair, for example, which supplies air filters to the U.S. Embassy, experienced a fivefold increase in sales last month after the Diwali holiday, when fireworks left clouds of smoke over Delhi, said Bengt Rittri, the company’s chief executive. Noorul Huda, a homemaker who lives in Old Delhi, said she has been struggling with whether to keep her three school-age kids indoors all the time. She is thinking of buying her first air purifier, despite its $538 price tag. “We have to buy it. We have a water purifier, why not an air purifier?” she said. In China, outrage over the country’s pollution levels — officials issued their first red alert because of poor air quality in Beijing last week — has been driven by a motivated middle class and plays out on social media sites such as Weibo. This has not been true of India until recently. “A lot of people have a very indifferent attitude,” said Pooja Dodd, 41, a lawyer who organized the masked “Delhi Smug in Smog!?!” picnic. “They may feel pollution is killing them, but not many of them want to do something about it.” But that is changing, especially as the number of those suffering respiratory problems because of the bad air continues to rise. A recent study found that 43 percent of Delhi schoolchildren have reduced lung function. Amit Kumar, 35, who runs a small hosiery supply company, sent his wife and 3-year-old daughter to live in his home village in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh until the air improves. “I ride a motorcycle and inhale poison every day,” he said. “I hope Kejriwal’s plan will work. It may create some problems initially, but if we try to adjust, we can make Delhi a better place. It’s the best city in India.” Critics have said that the Delhi government’s alternate-day driving plan has been tried in other major cities with mixed success. The city’s public transport system — which is an estimated 10,000 buses short of need — is not equipped to handle a large influx of riders, they say. In addition, most Delhi residents travel by foot, bicycle, public transport and on scooters rather than in private cars, which remain the province of the affluent. Vehicles cause only about a quarter of the hazardous PM2.5 particulate matter that can be damaging to health. Other contributors are road dust, cooking with firewood, and emissions from power plants and other large-scale industries. Akbar, a cinematographer who has lived in Delhi for 25 years, has coped with his daughter’s breathing episode by keeping the windows closed. He has always dreamed of buying a property in the foothills of the Himalayas, and now the time for that may come sooner rather than later. The new plan, he said, is obviously not a perfect solution to the “crazy pollution.” But “people are talking a lot more, so hopefully the discourse changes for the better,” he said. “Maybe something good comes out of it. Who knows?” **Read more** Burma victory caps a decades-long battle for opposition leader Suu Kyi Inside the Indian temple that draws America’s tech titans India’s Modi wants to woo Silicon Valley, but censorship and privacy fears grow at home

Living in Beijing’s polluted air

I woke up in my dark bedroom the other day, head pounding and mouth dry. Before I even got out of bed, I knew that Beijing was having one of its hazardous-air-quality days. There was a tickle in my throat. My eyes stung and watered the minute I set foot outside. On a similar day a few days before, I’d walked only 10 minutes from my apartment to my friend’s place. By the time I got there, my coat, scarf and hair smelled the way they would have smelled after a night in a smoky bar followed by a couple of hours standing behind a car’s exhaust pipe. If that’s what the air pollution is doing to my new winter coat, I wonder what it’s doing to my lungs. The fine particulates in Beijing air, created by coal being burned to generate electricity and to heat homes, and by car exhaust and factories, are the most dangerous kind, doctors say, because they can lodge in the lungs, where they are absorbed into the heart, the blood and lung vessels, potentially causing heart disease and cancer. Adding to the problem are Los Angeles-like inversions that trap air within the city’s boundaries. This winter has been particularly bad. January alone had 19 days of hazardous air quality, which means that levels of the smallest particulate matter soared to over 301 micrograms per cubic meter. The U.S. Embassy, which monitors Beijing’s air quality, says that hazardous air can lead to “serious aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly; serious risk of respiratory effects in general population.” Not long ago, the embassy posted recommendations about what to do in hazardous air situations. When the pollution rises above 500 (which the embassy calls “beyond index,” although the term “crazy bad” also has been used), it advises people to stay indoors with air purifiers, be familiar with the signs of heart attack and stroke, and remain sedentary. Don’t burn candles. There’s even a link for a California site on dealing with wildfire smoke, which creates the same level of fine particulates as really bad air days in China. Justin Higgins, an embassy spokesman, said, “I think it’s fair to say, given the recent conditions, that we wanted to push our recommendations out there.” It’s hard to compare Beijing’s bad air days to conditions in the United States. A friend of mine who grew up in Los Angeles in the 1960s recalls the California smog as “a constant, eye-stinging haze that ranged from yellowish to brownish.” But the Clean Air Act in 1970 had an impressive effect, so much so that Salt Lake City had a minor freakout in December when its pollution reached a level that would be considered only moderate by Chinese standards: a smallest-particulate reading of 130. Utah officials deemed it a “public health emergency,” and USA Today described it as “sickening fog.” By Chinese standards, it’s barely worth mentioning. In fact, 130 in Beijing is officially just “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” My husband and I consider 150 to be the rough cutoff for jogging outside. On Jan. 12, the measurement reached 886, which one article equated to living in a smokers’ lounge. And Beijing isn’t even the most polluted city in China, according to the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection. That honor goes to Urumqi, in the far west of the country. We’re No. 3. Foreigners living here talk about how the bad air causes them a plethora of health problems, from days-long headaches to bad coughs to sinus issues that require surgery. One expat told me that after a friend of hers had lived in Beijing for about three years, her doctor said her lungs looked like those of a pack-a-day smoker, even though she had never picked up a cigarette. Many parents refuse to let their children play outside, and one mother said her 2-year-old was starting to look like a vampire because he was so pale. Chinese people living in the capital often wear flimsy cloth masks, more decorative than protective, and they’re starting to get worried that the air is affecting their health. The government ordered some factories shut down and limited the number of government-owned cars in the city, but no one seems confident that an immediate and sustainable solution is near. Years ago, longtime expats say, the cold winter winds often blew away Beijing’s air pollution, but now, with the city having grown and with so many households still burning coal for heat, the winter tends to have as many bad days as the summer. We live in an apartment with large, drafty windows. My bedroom is the draftiest room in the house, so I usually know when I wake up whether the air quality that day is bad. The windows are so leaky that a strong wind will blow them open, and you can hear the cars on the street as if they were right next to you. The windows in the dining room is smudged with grime that seeped in from the outside. When I venture outside, my eyes burn and my throat catches with the dryness and the cold and the stink. There’s a tickle in my throat and I’m developing what’s called the Beijing cough. People’s Daily described the cough as “the symptoms of dry cough and throat itching suffered by foreigners when they arrive in Beijing. It is a manifestation of their inability to adapt to the climate of Beijing” and will disappear when they leave the city, the paper writes. News reports say that thousands of people are jamming the hospitals with asthma and other respiratory ailments. So why don’t I wear a mask outside or use a machine inside? I suppose it’s because there are enough other health issues that seem more significant. Food safety is a big issue. Is it safe to eat Chinese-brand yogurt? What about strawberries from Yunnan or cauliflower from Beijing? Water is also a concern. One cannot drink the tap water, so that means buying bottled water. But what kind of water should be used to wash fruit and vegetables? I don’t buy the special vegetable-washing detergent that some folks use, and I wash my fruit and vegetables with water that I’ve taken from the tap — and then boiled. Transportation poses its own problems. In this sprawling city of more than 20 million, there’s no easy way to get around. Walking is dangerous, as cars often speed up if they see you scurrying across the street. Taxis can be hard to find. And the subway, which expands every day, is cheap but so crowded that I’ve had lipstick wiped from my mouth as I stood in a packed car. I’ve seen people unable to get off a train at their stop, prevented by the surge of crowds pushing into the car. I have many friends who bike everywhere in town, but the stories of accidents and injuries and near misses have been enough to put me off. As a result, air quality slips down my worry list. When the smallest-particulate reading hit 422 (the U.S. Embassy app warns: “Hazardous, protection recommended; health alert: everyone may experience more serious health effects, please avoid physical exertion and outdoor activities”) the other day, one of my friends texted me: “That does it. I’m going to take a nap. When I wake up it better be down to ‘very unhealthy’ or lower.” I’m not sure who the veiled threat was aimed at, but I certainly appreciate the reaction. Sometimes in China, the only reaction is to stay inside, stay calm and figure out what to order for takeout. Bruno is a freelance writer in Beijing. She blogs about her life at notbyoccident.blogspot.com.

Air pollution in India is so bad that it kills  half a million people every year

Prodding China to confront its urban air pollution problems

Noxious, choking air pollution has smothered Beijing and other major Chinese cities for years, making it difficult for people to breathe and causing an estimated 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010 alone. But until recently, the Chinese government routinely dismissed the public health risk. A major cause of China’s gray skies was publicly revealed when the environmental section at the U.S. embassy in Beijing led by Erica Thomas placed a monitor on top of the embassy building to take their own air pollution readings, and then began publishing that information on Twitter for American citizens living there. The move resulted not only in Americans using the data to try to reduce their exposure to harmful air pollution, but Chinese citizens and other foreign residents in Beijing also became aware of the extent of the problem. The access to real time air pollution data along with relevant U.S.-approved health advisories generated enough public pressure within China for the Chinese government to promise to improve measurement standards beginning in 2016, and for the city of Beijing and 73 other municipal authorities to begin reporting more accurate daily readings starting in 2012. In January 2013, when some Chinese cities experienced record-breaking air pollution levels, the Chinese government urged residents to take precautions, representing a significant shift in environmental and health policy. “I’ve never seen an initiative of the U.S. government have such an immediate, dramatic impact in a country,” said U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke. “We engage the Chinese government and people on a wide range of issues from human rights to the rule of law. The response by the Chinese people and government on the environment has been unprecedented.” ### Who is Erica Thomas?  **POSITION:** Environment, Science, Technology and Health Counselor, U.S. Embassy, Beijing, Department of State  **RESIDENCE:** Beijing, China  **AGE:** 46  **EDUCATION:** University of Pennsylvania, B.A; Princeton University, M.A.  **AWARDS:** 2013 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal finalist “In January, when we had many days of obscenely bad air pollution, even the government newspapers had editorials demanding that something be done,” said Locke. There is currently a heated internal debate within China regarding tougher pollution controls, but obstacles remain and progress has been slow due to domestic economic and political factors. A study published in April 2013 in Lancet, the British medical journal, reported that outdoor air pollution in China contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010. It also has been reported that parents are confining sons and daughters to their homes, schools are canceling outdoor activities and field trips, and some middle- and upper-class Chinese parents and expatriates have begun leaving China because of the pollution. The U.S. effort initially began in 2008 when embassy officials began examining and monitoring Beijing’s air quality data. Thomas took over the program and worked with her colleagues to move ahead to ensure it was expanded to other cities with American consulates, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenyang. The Chinese government publicly accused officials at the U.S. Embassy and its consulates of illegally interfering in China’s domestic affairs, asserting they had no authority to monitor China’s environment, let alone publicly release the data. The U.S. ambassador described Thomas and her group as “very forward-thinking” and said they have made sure that the Chinese government and the public “could not question the accuracy, the integrity or the applicability of the information we’re presenting to them.” Despite initial efforts by the Chinese government to block access to the data, smartphone users were able to download an application that displayed air quality readings from their local government and the U.S. Embassy side-by-side, and prominent users of China’s hybrid version of Twitter and Facebook, with millions of followers, regularly repost the State Department’s air quality data. “This team is very skilled. They know the technical issues, and they know how to push the effort ahead,” said Robert Wang, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. “They are all very much focused because they saw this project having real consequences, not just in the American community, but in terms of Chinese policies.” Locke said U.S. embassies all over the world now want to replicate the work of Thomas and her team, noting that the staff has been developing new software that can be used worldwide. Wang said he was pleased that China has stopped criticizing the U.S. and is now focused on publishing its own real time data. He said the bottom line is that the public release of regular data from the embassy and consulates has informed American and Chinese citizens about the air pollution dangers. “Although the Chinese standards are not as stringent as in the United States, there is now some positive movement,” said Wang. “Everyone is much more aware of China’s air pollution problems and actions to address them are increasing.” _This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to www.servicetoamericamedals.org/nominate to nominate a federal employee for a Service to America Medal and http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference._

Can China escape its choking air pollution?

THE NORTH of China choked on a deadly fog this week. The good news is that China’s government has a new plan to address the country’s air pollution, and increasing unease among the nation’s new middle class is placing some pressure on the regime to make good on its commitments. Yet orchestrating a quick and significant reduction in air pollution would challenge any government, and China’s has a mixed record of enforcing environmental standards. At stake is the health and livelihood of hundreds of millions of people. Toxic air pollution got so bad this week in the metropolis of Harbin, which boasts a population of more than 10 million, that buses were getting lost in the dull haze, cars were using their fog lights and airports were closed. The government is considering heavy restrictions on travel and industrial activity. Even when the pollution isn’t so spectacularly bad, air purifiers have become a must-have home appliance and a common subject of small talk among those who can afford them. A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences noted that, between 1981 and 2001, particulate pollution in China was five times worse than what the United States experienced before Congress passed the 1970 Clean Air Act, and that was before China’s rapid economic expansion over the past dozen years. The analysis concluded that dirty air shortens people’s lives by an average of 5.5 years in polluted northern China compared with the cleaner south. Part of the issue is that pockets of high pressure around northern China prevented the air from clearing. But the real problem is large-scale coal burning. The country has abundant amounts of the sooty fuel, and it is responsible for about half of the world’s annual coal consumption. Apart from spewing massive amounts of climate-change-inducing greenhouse emissions, burning coal releases particulate matter into the air, from which it enters people’s lungs and bloodstreams. The poor planning and corruption of an unaccountable political leadership, insulated from public pressure and common sense, in large part created this choking industrial hell; they have encouraged coal-fired power generation and coal burning in homes for years, flouting environmental concerns. But last month the regime announced that it would attempt to limit coal use to 65 percent of energy consumption by 2017. Last year coal produced 67 percent of the country’s energy. The government also unveiled reduction targets for various types of particulate matter and restrictions on auto pollution. Authorities are right to focus on reducing coal consumption, which will have to drop much more in the long term. But doing that well will be a challenge. The government’s plan to power Beijing with synthetic natural gas, derived from coal, could reduce ambient air pollution, but it would also produce a lot more carbon dioxide emissions and gobble up fresh water in areas of the country that can hardly spare it, a World Resources Institute analysis found. And the whole program requires that state authorities enforce it. China already has pollution standards that often haven’t been respected. This time around, will local officials stick to official policy when it might curtail economic growth or limit the opportunity for corruption? The well-being of northern China depends on the answer. **Read more:** The Post’s View: New analysis confirms the danger of climate change Eugene Robinson: No more excuses on climate change Jim Yong Kim: U.S. takes key climate change steps, but the world must do more

The biggest story you missed: Airpocalypse returns to China

Airpocalypse returns to China  So much choking smog covered the Chinese city of Shenyang last weekend that buildings were barely visible in photos and people on the streets wore masks. Chinese cities are used to super bad levels of pollution. As the country became the world’s industrial powerhouse, its demand for electricity soared, The Post’s Simon Denyer explained.  **“The nation burned coal as if there was no tomorrow.”**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico   But officials in Shenyang said their reading last Sunday might have set a record, at least since China began monitoring pollution levels in 2013.  How bad was it? **50 times higher** than the levels the World Health Organization considers safe, the BBC said.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **“Beyond the index,”** or simply off the chart, according to the U.S. consulate’s update.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **“** **Fairyland or doomsday?”** China’s state-backed news agency asked, tweeting eerily beautiful photos of the city.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico  As winter approaches, it’s expected to get worse when people turn up the heat.   More than 7 million premature deaths worldwide are linked to air pollution annually. World Health Organization  But cleaner, clearer skies might be in China’s future.  “Aware that pollution undermined their legitimacy, China’s leaders declared a ‘war on air pollution,’ ” Denyer recently wrote. The country shut down 1,100 small coal mines just last year, and hopes to build a new services-led, consumer-led economy. And that would mean less pollution.  Over the years, China’s epic smog problem has inspired some creative (wacky) solutions. Inventive citizens have experimented with bikes that purify the air as you pedal and all kinds of do-it-yourself air-filtering machines. And officials have considered installing giant vacuum cleaners to clear away the smog, and artificial rain to wash those gray skies clean. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” a Post story last year warned.

In China, dangerous air pollution causes schools and highways to close for days

The dense smog that has smothered much of China for five days may soon finally clear, weather forecasters and state media said Wednesday, giving relief to hundreds of millions of people breathing dangerously polluted air and struggling under the government’s emergency measures. The national weather authority forecast that nighttime winds will push out much of the pollution that has left Beijing and dozens of other cities under a five-day “red alert,” the highest level in China’s air-pollution warning system. Schools were closed, flights canceled, and factories and highways shut down in attempts to improve the air quality. But the prolonged red alert disrupted the lives of many in Beijing, China’s capital. A grandmother and her grandson ventured outside their home Wednesday for the first time in several days. The boy had stayed home from school since Monday and was getting bored inside, said the woman, who would only give her family name of Yang. “The pollution is rather scary, so we don’t go out or go very far,” she said. By the calculations of Greenpeace East Asia, the red alert affects 460 million people, with about 200 million people living in areas where the air was polluted more than 10 times above the guideline set by the World Health Organization. China has long had some of the worst air in the world, blamed on its reliance on coal and a surplus of older, less efficient cars. It has set pollution-reduction goals but also has plans to increase coal-mining capacity. The country eased limits on production when faced with rising energy prices. Ordinary Chinese pay close attention to air-pollution readings and government statements on smog, often with deep skepticism. China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection acknowledged this week that its inspectors found some factories violating antipollution orders. And despite announcements of school closings in areas under red alerts, photos shared widely on Chinese social media showed students in Henan province hunched over their desks taking an exam while shrouded in a gray haze. State media reported the school principal was suspended “for causing a bad impact on society.” The shutdown of hundreds of construction sites — and a ban in some parts of Beijing on spray painting — has affected the thousands of migrants from China’s provinces who come to the capital seeking work. “We have stopped for five days now,” said one migrant worker from Henan province who gave his family name of Geng. “We haven’t earned a penny. We live off our own savings. We spend [about $4.30] on living expenses every day that we don’t work.”

Wealth didn’t matter. Pollution from a coal-fired plant, carried miles by wind, still hurt their babies.

Air pollution from power plants has wanderlust. It never stays still. It rides the wind, drifting far from its source, visiting homes miles away with potentially harmful effects.  It didn’t matter that the mothers there had advantages that low-income mothers don’t: money and access to private health care. Their babies still appeared to suffer from the effects of air pollution, specifically wind-borne sulfur emissions. The study authors say stronger federal regulation of emissions from coal-fired plants is needed to safeguard human health. Plenty of research has looked at the negative effects of air pollution made worse by smoke drifting from coal-burning power plants. But this study by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University is the first to assess cross-state sulfur dioxide pollution from a specific plant, the Portland Generating Station in Northampton County, Pa., and to use atmospheric dispersal modeling to link it to downwind areas — in this case, Warren, Morris, Hunterdon and Sussex counties in New Jersey. “We have this very unique situation where the source is uniquely identified,” said lead author Muzhe Yang, an associate professor in the Lehigh economics department. “Most studies focus on low-wage areas, and we looked at a wealthy region. We are filling a very important gap. This is just the beginning step, an impact on early life through birth outcomes.”    At the same time, even while fighting pollution sources beyond their borders, downwind states also must work to improve their own air quality to mitigate the harm to residents, he noted. Finding the source of the Mid-Atlantic region’s sulfur dioxide pollution wasn’t hard. New Jersey has been at war with the power plant on its border with Pennsylvania for years. In 2010, New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection filed a petition with the EPA after studies showed the Portland Generating Station had emitted more than 30,000 tons of sulfur dioxide during the previous year — double the sulfur emissions from all electricity-generating plants in New Jersey. A trajectory analysis using atmospheric dispersal modeling showed that the wind transported the sulfur emissions to Warren County. A month later, New Jersey filed a second petition with evidence that pollution from the facility also reached three other counties, including the borough of Chester in Morris County, 21 miles southeast. The EPA ruled against the plant, which eventually stopped burning coal in 2014. “It’s possible that other air pollutants emitted from PGS, such as nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide, are also able to reach New Jersey through prevailing wind in this region,” the study says, without offering any proof. To examine the potential impact on pregnant women, the authors concentrated on a treasure trove of information from those New Jersey petitions. They also relied on weather-monitoring sources that calculated daily and monthly average wind directions and the state’s atmospheric dispersal modeling. Finally, they used New Jersey’s state inpatient database for a look at all live births starting in 1990, five years before sulfur dioxide emissions from the Pennsylvania plant were first recorded. Multiple births were excluded.   The state database provided “demographic variables on the sex and race of an infant and the health insurance status of the mother” though not the mother’s age or educational attainment, according to the study. But it contained the women’s Zip codes, so researchers zeroed in on that. In the four counties, the infants were more likely to be white and their mothers “slightly more likely to have private health insurance and slightly less likely to have to self-pay for the childbirth” — a finding that aligned with census data. The counties had annual household incomes higher than the state’s $71,600 average and much higher than the national average of $53,000, placing them in a wealthy category that Yang said meant the women likely had better health care options. It probably also indicated they had more access to technology that could mitigate pollution than low-income residents studied in previous research. As for the Portland Generating Station, it found a new way to generate electricity. It switched from dirty coal to dirty diesel in 2014, and a new fight over pollution started.

Pollution is segregated, too

Studies dating back to the 1970s have pointed to a consistent pattern in who lives near the kinds of hazards --  toxic waste sites, landfills, congested highways \-- that few of us would willingly choose as neighbors. The invariable answer: poor people and communities of color.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University This pattern of "environmental injustice" suggests that minorities may contend every day with disproportionate health risks from tailpipe exhaust or coal plant emissions. But these health risks are harder to quantify than, say, the number of power plants in a city. And most of the research that has tried to do this has been limited to a single metropolitan area, or to those few places that happen to have good monitoring data on pollution.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Now, however, researchers at the University of Minnesota, writing in the journal _PLOS ONE_, have created a sweeping picture of unequal exposure to one key pollutant -- nitrogen dioxide, produced by cars, construction equipment and industrial sources -- that's been linked to higher risks of asthma and heart attack. They've found, all over the country, in even the most rural states and the cleanest cities, that minorities are exposed to more of the pollution than whites.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "The biggest finding is that we have this national picture of environmental injustice and how it varies by state and by city," says Julian Marshall, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Minnesota and one of the authors of the study along with Lara P. Clark and Dylan B. Millet. "The levels of disparity that we see here are large and likely have health implications." Specifically, they found that minorities are on average exposed to 38 percent higher levels of outdoor NO2 than whites in the communities where they live, based on demographic data from the 2000 census. That gap varies across the country, though, and it's substantially wider in the biggest cities. Nationwide, the difference in exposure is akin to approximately 7,000 deaths a year from heart disease. "It’s a shockingly large number," Marshall says. "You’re taking what's a major killer of people [in heart disease] and increasing it slightly, by a few percent. But that’s a lot." Regionally, the disparities are largest in the upper Midwest and the Northeast, but the model Marshall and his coauthors developed can drill down from there. These maps show the differences in average exposure to NO2 between low-income nonwhites and high-income whites: And at an even more local scale: In that bottom map, the New York/Newark metropolitan area ranks as having the widest disparity in average exposure between lower-income minority census block groups and upper-income white ones across the entire metro area. New York is followed by Philadelphia; Bridgeport/Stamford, Conn.; Boston; Providence, R.I.; Detroit; Los Angeles; and New Haven, Conn. The demographic data contained in this analysis is the simple piece ("whites," by the way, refer to non-Hispanic whites). The much more complicated part came in modeling NO2 exposure in such fine-grained detail across the country. Researchers can't realistically deploy pollution monitors everywhere. But, based on a methodology developed in previous work with other researchers, Marshall and his co-authors used a model that predicts NO2 concentrations at the census block level based on satellite and ground measurements alongside land-use data on roads, population density, built-up environments and tree cover.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Trees are a key part of the model not because they mitigate NO2, but because they're a proxy for the absence of cars or other sources of pollution. "It’s because those trees are _not_ cars," Marshall says. Land that looks like a park in satellite data probably doesn't contain a power plant. NO2 tends to be high, on the other hand, around highways and busy central business districts.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The maps above compare low-income minorities to upper-income whites, an admittedly stark way of illustrating the problem. But even after controlling for income, large disparities remain between white and non-white communities. On average, within individual urban areas, the disparities in exposure by race (after controlling for income) were more than two times as large as the disparities by income (after controlling for race). "If we look at race only, without accounting for income, then we see a larger gap," Marshall says. "If you account for income, you _still_ get a gap."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Race becomes an even larger factor the bigger the city. This means that the environmental injustice measured here is not purely a disparity between the poor and the wealthy. Something is going on here in the kinds of communities where minorities of all incomes live. That finding is consistent with other data suggesting that even upper-income blacks tend to live in neighborhoods with worse outcomes and higher poverty levels than _lower-income_ whites.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University This new research doesn't delve into the underlying questions of why these patterns exist. "Fundamentally," Marshall says, "these outcomes are the result of spatial patterns in air pollution and spatial patterns in demographic groups, and the correlations between them." But history gives us some ideas as to why minorities are more likely to live near what researchers have clinically labeled "locally undesirable land uses." And, as in other ways, history is not made up of accidents. Many urban highways, for instance, were originally routed through minority communities that were politically easier to uproot than middle-class white neighborhoods. Rumbling highways and landfills also depress nearby property values, meaning that people who can afford to live elsewhere do, while those who can't remain within their influence.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Beijing’s air is getting slightly better — here’s how and why

As decision day looms for host city for the 2022 Winter Olympics, officials in the Chinese capital boasted this week that they were finally making progress in cleaning up their city's notoriously polluted air. Several months of slightly lower pollution levels have been capped by two weeks of clear blue skies, leaving many of Beijing’s residents smiling. Nevertheless, environmental experts said it is far too early to declare victory, and that a marginal improvement in air quality did not imply that the battle against pollution had been won. Efforts to cut coal consumption in Beijing and the neighboring province of Hebei, including the closure of two coal-fired power plants in the capital in March, have begun to have an effect, officials from Beijing’s environmental protection bureau told reporters Thursday. Nearly half a million old vehicles were also taken off the city’s streets last year. As a result, Beijing recorded a 19 percent drop in the average PM2.5 level — a measure that records small particles in the air that enter people’s lungs and pose a major health threat — in the first four months of the year. The city also recorded 57 days officially classified as having “good air quality,” an increase of eight from the same time last year, though China’s benchmark would not meet global standards. Fang Li, deputy director of Beijing’s environmental protection bureau, said the improvement was partly a delayed result of measures taken last year. But he also admitted that favorable weather had helped to disperse smog. The data is largely consistent with observations by environmental groups here: Greenpeace recorded a 13 percent decline in PM2.5 levels in the first quarter. “This means that the government’s strict pollution controls are working, at least enough to record a modest improvement on last year,” said Fang Yuan, a spokesman for the Climate and Energy Program of Greenpeace East Asia. But he cautioned that “this is the only silver lining in a situation where 90 percent of cities still record levels of pollution that far exceed China’s own air quality standards” — which are already more lax than U.S. standards. In China, the air quality is considered good when the 24-hour average PM2.5 level falls below 70 micrograms per cubic meter of air. In the United States, that level would be classified as “unhealthy.” China’s leaders have declared a “war on pollution” and unveiled a national plan to improve air quality in late 2013. On Thursday, the city’s administration invited reporters for a day of presentations about its efforts to clean up the air, to support Beijing’s bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. They said the main Olympic sites — Yanqing in north Beijing and Chongli in neighboring Hebei province — enjoy some of the best air in northern China. But environmentalist Ma Jun said that if favorable weather were removed from the equation, Beijing’s air pollution might still be high. He urged the authorities to push harder to cut emissions and also highlighted concerns that pollution is being transferred to central and western areas of China, as eastern coastal areas cut back on coal consumption but some heavy industry moves west. “We need to apply equally strict standards to the midwestern areas and equally strict law enforcement,” said Ma, whose Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs is also pushing for more disclosure of pollution data from factories and other sources in central and western areas. Greenpeace is also arguing for regional caps on coal consumption within China and for  reducing PM2.5 level targets across the country. The decision over which city will host the 2022 Winter Olympics, a toss-up between Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Beijing, will be announced July 31. **Read more**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico • Beijing's Olympic bid tests whether the IOC is serious about reform    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico • In China’s war on bad air, government decision to release data gives fresh hope    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Japanese take action against Chinese smog

TOKYO — Even as it struggles to keep menacing Chinese ships from entering its territorial waters, Japan is bracing itself for an altogether different kind of danger from its larger neighbor – toxic smog. Under guidelines issued on Wednesday, Japanese authorities will urge residents to stay indoors if the level of toxic smog spreading to Japan from China exceeds twice the allowable limit set by the central government. The guidelines come in response to mounting concerns in Japan about the potential harmful effects of the toxic smog wafting across the ocean and after talks between the two countries on ways to curb pollution levels. In recent weeks, levels of air pollution in Beijing have hit all-time highs – the concentration of fine particulates reaching levels far greater than that considered healthy under the latest U.S. standards – and triggered health concerns beyond China. “There are increasing inquiries from the general public on the situation,” especially in western Japan, said Hitoshi Yoshizaki, deputy director of the ministry of environment’s air quality division. “Many people would like to know how to protect themselves.” The new provisional guidelines, compiled by the environment ministry, recommend that people stay indoors if the average amount of air pollutant, PM 2.5, is projected to exceed 70 micrograms per cubic meter – or twice the ministry’s maximum permissible level of 35 micrograms a day. Beijing’s pollution regularly exceeds 10 times that level – on Wednesday evening Beijing’s PM 2.5 levels were 273 micrograms per cubic meter. The air pollutant PM 2.5 is considered most hazardous because the particulates are small enough to enter the bloodstream and damage lung tissue. Since April 2012, levels over 70 micrograms per cubic meter have been recorded at six monitoring stations in Japan. In future, Japanese local authorities will recommend that those most vulnerable – people with heart or lung disease, the elderly and children – stay indoors if the PM 2.5 level exceeds that level. In China, where PM 2.5 has enveloped cities including Beijing, the government considers anything above 300 as “severely polluted” and “hazardous.” The main source of the pollution is believed to be intensive burning of coal in power plants and people’s homes in China, particularly in the cold winter months. Levels of PM 2.5 are being monitored at more than 500 stations across Japan but the government aims to increase that to 1,300. The municipal government of Fukuoka, the biggest city on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu and one of the closest to the Chinese mainland, has developed its own system for warning residents when levels of PM 2.5 exceed certain limits. However, with just a few weeks of data since concerns mounted in January, it is hard to assess the real risks to health, Yoshizaki said, noting that overall air quality standards had not dropped dramatically from a year earlier. Last week, officials from Japan’s Ministry of the Environment met counterparts at China’s Ministry of Environment Protection to discuss “potential collaboration” on projects to curb pollution, according to Yoshizaki. **— Financial Times** Ben McLannahan in Tokyo and Leslie Hook in Beijing also contributed to this story.

The globalization of pollution

THE NEXT time you’re in Los Angeles, take a deep breath. A significant portion of the pollution you’ll breathe into your lungs came from across the Pacific Ocean. Decades ago, Angelenos’ respiratory tracts may have been burned by the accumulation of local pollutants in and around Southern California’s valleys and basins. Since then, federal and state pollution controls did much to clean up the air. But a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that neither federal nor state authorities can as effectively restrain one pollution source: China. Chinese and American researchers estimated the amount and ultimate destination of smog-forming gases and particulates that Chinese factories pumped out in their production of export goods. Up to a quarter of the sulfate pollution in the western United States wafted over from those factories. Their emissions add a day of substandard air in the Los Angeles area every year. And those are just the fraction of Chinese emissions associated with world trade. Nations closer to China suffer much more. The health and well-being of many people in many countries, not just those choking on thick, brown air in Beijing, depend on China developing into not merely a great economic power but also one that manages its massive impact on the planet. Typically, greenhouse gases are thought of as unique among environment-altering emissions, in part because carbon dioxide released anywhere contributes to global warming everywhere. Climate change, then, must ultimately be solved by many nations — particularly the emissions behemoths, the United States and China — moving in the same direction. But there are dozens of cross-border environmental issues, and they will require overcoming global political tensions and short-term economic incentives that discourage different countries from cooperating. The world has already tackled one — the phaseout of emissions that thin the ozone layer — through the highly effective Montreal Protocol. Global leaders have many more to see to. **Read more on this issue:** Jim Yong Kim: The world must do more to address climate change The Post’s View: Can China escape its choking air pollution? Michael Gerson: Politics is poorly suited to address global warming Kofi Annan: A united call for action on climate change Bjørn Lomborg: Don’t blame climate change for extreme weather

1 in 7 children globally lives with ‘toxic’ air, study finds

About 300 million children — roughly 1 in 7 worldwide — live in areas with “toxic” levels of air pollution, according to new research from the United Nations Children’s Fund. The findings offer the latest reminder that some of the planet’s most vulnerable inhabitants face the worst environmental health threats. Their release Monday comes as international leaders prepare to convene next month in Morocco to continue their efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions and stave off the worst effects of global warming. UNICEF used satellite imagery to detail how an estimated 2 billion children live in areas where outdoor pollution exceeds minimum air-quality guidelines set by the World Health Organization. Of those, about 300 million children live in areas where outdoor pollution has reached particularly dangerous levels — often six or seven times beyond international guidelines. The result: air pollution has been linked to more than a half-million deaths each year of children younger than 5, nearly twice the death toll caused by malaria. Poor air quality also contributes to an array of respiratory conditions, including pneumonia, asthma and bronchitis. “Many of these children are already disadvantaged by poverty and deprivation. Some are already at heightened risk from conflicts, crises and the intensifying effects of climate change,” Anthony Lake, UNICEF’s executive director, wrote in a foreword to the report. “Air pollution is yet another threat to their health and well being — and yet another way in which the world is letting them down.”  “That physiological difference essentially makes them even more vulnerable,” said Rees, a policy specialist for UNICEF. “It’s also that the poorest children are the most affected. If we look at the burden of mortality associated with air pollution, we find that the vast majority — about 90 percent of outdoor air pollution deaths — are in low- and middle-income countries.”  With children and adults alike, the greatest concern is a form of pollution called PM2.5, which refers to particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers — so small that they can be inhaled, travel into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. The WHO considers a concentration greater than 10 micrograms per cubic meter of these fine particles to be dangerous. The sources of air pollution are among the main factors fueling the warming of the planet, namely fossil-fuel emissions. Particulate air pollution in cities can come from many sources, from smokestacks to automotive tailpipes, from manufacturing facilities to exhaust from planes and ships. As urban air quality declines, researchers say, people living in cities face increased risks of heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and acute respiratory illnesses. And in many places, the burden of pollution is only growing worse, not better. Another WHO report, released earlier this year, found that air pollution continues to worsen in urban areas in many parts of the world, hitting the poorest city dwellers hardest and contributing to a wide range of potentially life-shortening health problems. The agency found that in “low- and middle-income countries,” 98 percent of urban areas with populations of more than 100,000 fall shy of its air-quality standards. Asia accounts for a large number of deaths attributable to air pollution. But increasing industrialization and urbanization are contributing to growing air-quality risks in parts of Africa. George D. Thurston, a professor of environmental medicine and population health at the New York University School of Medicine, said many children in developing countries face a “triple whammy” when it comes to air pollution. They already lack proper nutrition and other needs that put them more at risk. Beyond significant levels of outdoor pollution, they often encounter additional air pollution at home, where unvented cooking with fuels such as wood, dried leaves, dung or even coal is common. “You’re really talking about a susceptible population,” Thurston said. “There would be a big return on investment, in terms of public health, by cleaning up that pollution.” The clearest way to do that, he said, is to ramp up the use of clean, alternative energy sources, which will be essential in coming decades for countries needing to provide energy to expanding populations. “The things you have to do to prevent climate change are also good for public health,” said Thurston, who is part of a group of U.S. and Indian researchers meeting soon to discuss new ways to deal with pollution in the developing world. “You’re going to save lives, and by the way, you’re also going to save the planet.” UNICEF on Monday urged world leaders to do just that by moving faster to cut fossil-fuel combustion and accelerate clean-energy development. The group also said countries must act more aggressively to monitor air pollution, provide poor children better access to health care and minimize exposure to polluted air by taking measures such as ensuring factories are not near schools and playgrounds. “Protecting children from air pollution is not only in their best interest, it is also in the best interests of their societies,” Lake wrote, noting that the benefits would lower health costs, increase productivity and lead to more sustainable development. “We can make the air safer for our children. And because we can, we must.”

Pollution here and abroad

DURING HIS confirmation hearing Thursday, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), President Obama’s pick to be the next secretary of state, said that he intends to press China on climate change. The rapidly developing behemoth, he noted, “is soon going to have double the emissions of the United States.” His words are a welcome dose of reality. In 2007 China blew past the United States as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Large, developing countries, particularly China and India, are projected to be responsible for a significant amount of the growth in global emissions over coming decades. These nations’ rapid economic expansion, which is pulling millions out of poverty, requires cheap energy. It’s little surprise, then, that China gets roughly 70 percent of its energy from abundant, dirty coal and has continued to build coal-fired power plants. These facts have led some to argue not only that climate change is an issue for the secretary of state as much as it is for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency but also that the United States should not act until it has ironclad assurances that other big emitters will move with comparable ambition. Following Mr. Obama’s promise, in his second inaugural address, to deal with climate change, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) told NPR that “individual legislation for the United States” was inappropriate absent a worldwide “treaty.” While it would be heartening if Mr. Grassley favors an international climate-change pact, his conclusion is wrong. The record suggests that the world is more likely to approach the climate issue with a bundle of national policies, rather than a comprehensive, top-down climate pact. Decades of effort have resulted in a stagnant debate but a surprising amount of movement within many countries absent a mutually binding accord. Even China has advanced modest medium-term emissions targets, has negotiated directly with the United States on climate commitments and appears willing to tie promotion within Communist Party ranks to meeting stated environmental goals. The problem is that this collection of policies is still small compared with the scale of emissions cuts scientists recommend. Much harder choices lie ahead for national leaders balancing short-term growth against long-term ecological concerns. One major reason for that is that the United States has not led. The nation is finally on a downward emissions trajectory, but the political debate gives little hope that the national commitment to long-term emissions cuts is durable. If we have reason to mistrust the Chinese on this, the Chinese have reason to mistrust us. Passing national climate legislation would remove one of the most potent excuses the Chinese have not to do more. American diplomats such as Mr. Kerry would be able to apply pressure without remaining open to charges of American hypocrisy. Sticks as well as carrots would be available. If Congress enacted a carbon tax, lawmakers could include a border adjustment on imports from countries that lack comparable policy. China’s growing emissions are a big problem. But they should not be another excuse for congressional inaction. **More on this topic:** The Post’s View: Obama’s second-term climate The Post’s View: After a hot year, a climate agenda The Post’s View: California’s climate change experiment The Post’s View: The carbon tax

The more we learn about air pollution, the worse it gets

Of greatest concern is a form of pollution called PM2.5, referring to particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers. The global health agency believes that a concentration greater than 10 micrograms per cubic meter of these fine particles in the air qualifies as dangerous. The great risk is that the particles are so small that they can be inhaled, travel into the lungs, and enter the bloodstream. “People think of air pollution as a respiratory disease,” said Carlos Dora, who heads the WHO’s air pollution team. “And in fact, it’s heart disease, strokes and cardiovascular. Because there’s very small particles that go into the blood. … The damage air pollution does to the vessels is similar to the damage that cholesterol or high blood pressure do. That has changed a lot the picture.” Dora said 10 years ago, few would have reached such conclusions about the severity of air pollution. But since then, he said, it is becoming clear that there are few causes of death that take a larger toll each year, including malaria and tuberculosis. The new report credits air pollution with “about one in every nine deaths annually.” The new model is allowing WHO to give increasingly fine-grained data about air pollution risks, by combining together over 3,000 actual ground measurements from across the world with satellite observations and an understanding of how air flows around the planet from place to place. “Based on the modelled data, 92% of the world population are exposed to PM2.5 air pollution concentrations that are above the annual mean” WHO guidelines, the report concluded. “With the exception of the region of the Americas, all regions … have less than 20% of the population living in places in compliance with” WHO standards. And of course it is actually worse than this, because air pollution contains more deleterious elements than just PM2.5, such as larger particles (PM10) and ozone. Moreover, the same emissions sources that are driving air pollution in many cases are also worsening global climate change. Air pollution is generated both from vehicles and also power generation and many industrial installations. In many developing countries it is also generated inside of homes from the burning of biomass or kerosene. Some of this pollution also floods outside and adds the burden on others.  “Air pollution is improving in rich countries, but it’s still getting worse in most developing countries,” said Dora.

This stunning world map shows the awful state of air pollution

It is a shocking real-time visualization of the damage we are doing to the planet — and to ourselves.    AirVisual uses big data to produce a stunning and almost hypnotic image of the globe, showing air pollution — the worst areas are in dark red — and wind speeds in real time. Billions of data points are collected daily, using government air-quality monitoring stations in countries such as the United States, China, Japan and South Korea, the company's own air-quality monitors in many other places, satellite imagery and U.S. government meteorological data. “It is hard to see air pollution in your house, so we wanted to make it very visual,” said the company's founder, Yann Boquillod. “Once you see the 3-D Earth, it is almost shocking. Our Earth is really suffering from the pollution we have created.”  Some of the profits from that device have gone into creating the world map. “We want people to understand — global warming is not coming out of nowhere. It is coming out of emissions,” Boquillod said. “We want to show how bad it is, so people have access to data — first, so they can protect themselves, and then so they can push governments to make a change.” According to the WHO, more than 90 percent of the world's population breathes air whose quality is far below the organization's standards, while the vast majority of deaths are in developing countries, especially in cities.  The global health agency said it believes that a concentration greater than 10 micrograms per cubic meter of these fine particles in the air qualifies as dangerous. Yet the map, which shows anything less than 12 micrograms per cubic meter in blue and green, reveals just how much of the globe fails to meet that standard. On Thursday, Beijing's municipal government issued an “orange alert” — the second-highest alert level — because of rising smog levels in the Chinese capital. The map shows just how much of China is blanketed in smog and how weather patterns are helping the polluted air to collect. It also shows the effect of sandstorms in places such as Saudi Arabia.

Beijing chokes on off-the-charts air pollution as thick smog settles over northern China

Beijing is choking on thick, brown smog after air pollution levels skyrocketed on Monday to more than 20 times what the World Health Organization considers to be safe. The oppressive pollution has prompted China to issue its highest air quality alert so far this year. Reuters reports authorities are blaming “unfavorable weather” and coal fires for the oppressive smog, which are lit by the poor for heat in winter. But that’s really only half the story — coal-fired power plants are also in overdrive since last week’s wintry blast. Temperatures were running as low as 25 degrees below normal for this time of year in northeast China for much of the past week. When the excessive power use for heating combined with stagnant high pressure, Beijing’s air quality took a nose-dive.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In terms of health impacts, the air quality in Beijing and other parts of northeast China is off the charts. On Monday, the air quality index measured at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reached a staggering 611 for small particulate matter. In the U.S., the EPA considers an index over 100 to be unhealthy. At an index over 300, the air quality “would trigger a heath warning of emergency conditions,” reads airnow.gov. “The entire population is more likely to be affected.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Particle pollution of this tiny size, just 2.5 micrometers, is incredibly hazardous to health, and even more so at these extraordinary levels. According to the EPA, particles smaller than 10 micrometers are the most dangerous to health because they can embed deep in the lungs. Some of the particles are even small enough to enter the bloodstream directly through the lungs.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Pollution this extreme can cause premature death, aggravated asthma, irregular heartbeats and decreased lung function. Though the young, elderly and sick are particularly vulnerable to air pollution, levels this high effect even the healthiest of people. An orange air quality alert was issued on Sunday, which required industry to cut production. A windy area of low pressure is forecast to sweep over northeast China on Tuesday and Wednesday which should help to alleviate the pollution concerns in Beijing.

Don’t make America smoggy again

Annie Gowen’s Feb. 15 WorldViews blog excerpt, “Breathing gets increasingly dangerous in India as pollution levels soar,” made clear what happens when industrialized societies depend heavily on fossil fuels and lack an adequate system of environmental regulations. Some of us remember the smog-filled skies in the United States that prompted the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970. Because of environmental regulations based on the best available science and technology, air quality in the United States has improved. Air-quality standards also have stimulated the growth of new technologies that enable cars to run and power plants to generate electricity while producing less pollution. The acid-rain problem has retreated. The ozone hole has shrunk. We have fewer bad air days and fewer pollution-related deaths and illnesses. Anyone tempted to dismantle our environmental regulations should look at the air in India and China. Especially if we want to see more products made in the United States, we need sensible, science-based, consistently enforced environmental regulations. The cost of not regulating emissions is too high. Let’s not make America smoggy again. ****Janet Gingold** , Upper Marlboro **

U.S. leads in number of people unconcerned about climate change and environmental disaster

The U.S. leads the world in number of people who aren’t convinced climate change and other environmental concerns are disasters in the making, according to a new poll released this week. This comes after the 2014 National Climate Assessment stated that climate change is happening now, and that the primary driver is “unequivocally” human emissions.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday The poll, conducted by U.K. research organization Ipsos MORI, was conducted in 20 countries across the globe, and gathered feedback from over 16,000 people. The poll asked eight climate change and environment-related questions. When asked the question, “To what extent do you agree or disagree? We are heading for environmental disaster unless we change our habits quickly,” only 57.3% of the respondents in the U.S. said that they agree. Of the countries surveyed, the U.S. came in last in the number of respondents who agreed with that statement. China, which has been the leading emitter of carbon dioxide according to the Environmental Protection Agency, had the most number of respondents agree with the statement that the world is heading for a disaster. The Unites States is the second largest emitter of carbon dioxide, and comes in 13th in energy efficiency, according to a scorecard released by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Air quality issues in China might have played a role in these results. The smog problem is notoriously bad in the country, and could be in the forefront of peoples’ minds as they answer questions about the environment. The U.S., on the other hand, has seen a marked improvement in air quality since the mid-20th century, when some regions’ pollution rivaled China’s current levels.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday In another survey question, respondents were asked if they agree that the climate change we are currently seeing is largely the result of human activity. 54% of U.S. respondents said that they agree — the lowest agreement ratio of the 20 countries polled. In China, 93% agree that human activity is to blame. In America, climate change often seems to boil down to party lines. The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication suggests there is a way to communicate the scientific consensus without triggering political polarization. They offer the solution of “using short, simple, declarative sentences or simple pie charts” when communicating the science to the public. They also note that while metaphors and analogies can be proven successful, it’s important to remember that “simple, sticky messages” are most effective.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday (Update, 5:55 p.m.: The headline was modified to clarify the referenced poll queried attitudes about environment broadly, rather than just climate change)

People are developing dementia earlier and dying of it more, a study shows

People are developing dementia a decade before they were 20 years ago, perhaps because of environmental factors such as pollution and the stepped-up use of insecticides, a wide-ranging international study has found. The study, which compared 21 Western countries between the years 1989 and 2010, found that the disease is now being regularly diagnosed in people in their late 40s and that death rates are soaring. The study was published in the Surgical Neurology International journal, and its findings publicized in the London Times newspaper Thursday. The problem was particularly acute in the United States, where neurological deaths in men aged over 75 have nearly tripled and in women risen more than fivefold, the leader of the study, Colin Pritchard from Bournemouth University, told the London Times. Scientists quoted in the study said a combination of environmental factors such as pollution from aircraft and cars as well as widespread use of pesticides could be the culprit, the newspaper reported. Early-onset dementia used to cover people developing the disease in their late 60s. Now, it’s meant to mean people much younger than that, the research showed. The study found that deaths caused by neurological disease had risen significantly in adults aged 55 to74, virtually doubling in the over-75s. Some 60 percent of the increase in deaths was attributed to dementias. Some 40 percent covered other neurological diseases such as Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, scientists told the London newspaper. The sharp increase in death rates from dementia-related diseases cannot simply be blamed on an aging population or stepped-up diagnosis, Pritchard said. “The rate of increase in such a short time suggested a silent or even a hidden epidemic, in which environmental factors must play a major part, not just aging,” he was quoted as saying. Pritchard said no single factor was to blame, but instead blamed the interaction between different chemicals and varying ypes of pollution. “The environmental changes in the last 20 years have seen increases in the human environment of petro-chemicals — air transport, quadrupling of motor vehicles, insecticides and rises in background electro-magnetic field, and so on,” Pritchard was quoted by the newspaper as saying. The scientists said nobody wanted to put an end to modern advances. Instead, to make them safer. Other experts quoted by the newspaper were skeptical about the causes for the increase. Tom Dening, professor of dementia research at the University of Nottingham, said that falling death rates for cancer and heart disease could account for the spike in deaths from neurological disease since people “had to die of something.” “We can’t conclude that modern life is causing these conditions at a younger age,” Dr. Simon Ridley, head of research at Alzheimer’s Reserach UK told the paper. “We know that Alzheimer’s and other dementias can have a complex interplay of risk factors.” Pritchard warned, however, that it was “time for us to wake up and realise that a major problem we now face is unprecedented levels of neurological disease, not just the early dementias.” Deane reported from Rome. **Read more:** Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Smog becomes a political issue in South Korean election

SEOUL — A rare springtime election will send South Koreans to the polls early next month, but here in smog-bound Seoul they may be gasping all the way. Spring is notorious for its poor air quality here. The combination of smog and the yellow dust that descends from Mongolia’s Gobi Desert every spring has produced pollution so thick that on the worst days — and there have been many of them — Seoul has looked like a city shrouded in a toxic gray blanket. This has made air pollution a topical issue in the snap presidential election, to be held May 9. “I will do everything in my power to make South Korea an environmentally clean country,” Moon Jae-in, the Democratic Party candidate and clear front-runner for the presidency, said this month. “People are angry over the government’s lack of action to tackle the almost-unbreathable air.” Moon and his closest rival, centrist Ahn Cheol-soo, have both pledged to work with China — blamed by the government for much of South Korea’s air problems, although environmental activists point out that most of the pollution is homegrown. They have also vowed to stop any new coal-fired power plants from being built. Hong Joon-pyo of the conservative Liberty Korea Party has also promised to work with China and increase the number of environmentally friendly cars on the roads. Seoul is joining Beijing and Delhi near the top of the list of Asian cities with certifiably unhealthy air. The South Korean capital now regularly records unhealthy levels of PM2.5 ultra-fine dust in the air — particles that are one-thirtieth the width of a human hair and can pick up lead and arsenic from the air and then embed themselves deep in a person’s lungs once inhaled. In the first months of this year, Seoul has been recording twice the number of ultrafine dust warnings as last year, with authorities advising people to limit outdoor activities and sensitive groups to stay inside altogether to avoid breathing in the dangerous particles. “It’s really frustrating because air pollution is not something I can fix as a citizen,” said Seoul resident Lee Eun-jung, the mother of two girls, ages 9 and 15. “My eldest daughter goes to a middle school where they still have outdoor P.E. classes on days when the pollution is considered dangerous. It breaks my heart to imagine her working out on a day like that,” Lee said. “My youngest daughter has asthma and has been hospitalized several times for pneumonia.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked PM2.5 to a variety of illnesses, including cancer and heart disease, and low birth weight. A recent South Korean study suggested an association with Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has predicted that 1,069 South Koreans per million will die prematurely in 2060 as a direct result of air pollution. South Korea is the only country in the “rich nations club” (a phrase often used to describe the OECD) to exceed 1,000 deaths per million in the projections. Local studies have put the economic damage caused by air pollution — largely because of lost production — at about $9 billion a year and have predicted this will double by 2060. The tendency here has been to blame the pollution on neighboring China, where coal-fired power plants and huge factories are spewing gunk into the environment to be carried on winds over to the Korean Peninsula. “China is the main culprit,” the environment ministry said in a report last month, saying that China causes 30 to 50 percent of the PM2.5 in South Korea on normal days, but 60 to 80 percent on the worst days. The central government has approached Beijing about working together to try to limit industrial pollution. But the practice of pointing the finger at China overlooks the fact that the majority of South Korea’s pollution is homegrown, analysts and activists say. Even if 30 to 50 percent of the ultrafine dust comes from China, that means 50 to 70 percent comes from South Korean sources, including exhaust from old diesel vehicles, “fugitive dust” from construction sites and tires hitting the road, and the illegal burning of waste. “The South Korean government looks like it’s trying to avoid dealing with the situation,” said Son Min-woo, a climate campaigner at Greenpeace Korea. “They aren’t doing enough to reduce the pollution here.” Greenpeace is lobbying the government to close down coal-fired power plants to reduce pollution. About 40 percent of South Korea’s electricity comes from more than 50 coal-fired power plants, and the country has plans to build 20 new plants by 2021 despite being a signatory to the Paris climate change deal. It will, however, shut down 10 aging plants by 2025. Other official efforts have had little effect. The Seoul metropolitan government has been ordering cars off the roads on alternate dates depending on their tags, but these restrictions apply only to government vehicles. Seoul also is doubling the number of street sweepers to pick up “fugitive dust” from the roads. Lee, the mother of two daughters, is doing as much as she can to protect her family, installing three air purifiers at home and spending about $50 a month on masks for her family. But she wants the South Korean government to do more. “I know China is responsible for a large part of the bad air, but I hear that coal-fired power plants and aging industrial sites violating regulations are serious factors, too,” she said. “The South Korean government says it is cooperating with China to tackle this issue, but I don’t know if any meaningful results will come out from that cooperation.” Bae Jeong-hwan, an economics professor at Chonnam National University, said a decade of effort by local and central governments had amounted to little. “The government is neglecting its duties by not taking more action while people’s lives are at stake,” he said, saying the central government had been tinkering around the edges rather than tackling the crux of the problem. For one, the government should bring the tax on diesel into line with that on gasoline, Bae said. “The diesel price has been kept down to help South Korean industry, but diesel trucks can produce more than 140 times more exhaust than diesel cars,” he said. “Regulations need to be strengthened to make some difference in the air quality.” Another, admittedly extreme option would be to impose a “smog tax” on products imported from China, Bae said. “When cooperation doesn’t work, stronger regulations or sanctions should be considered.” In the meantime, many people here are concerned that the government is minimizing the problem by having a looser definition of dirty air than the international standard. The World Health Organization classifies 25 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic meter in a day as unhealthy, but the South Korean government standard is double that. “I don’t understand this,” said Lee Mi-ok, a 38-year-old mother of a 4-year-old boy who was born prematurely with weak lungs. “Do Koreans have lungs that are twice as strong as other nationalities? Why do we have to put up with this bad air? What is the purpose of the government if it cannot protect lives and health of the people?” **Read more:**

Supreme Court decision is a breath of fresh air for the Northeast

Lost in the furor of Tuesday's news was a big Supreme Court decision that many consider a win for anyone in the Northeast who enjoys the privilege of breathing. A 6-to-2 decision by the Supreme Court upheld an Environmental Protection Agency rule that regulates the pollution that Rust Belt and Appalachian states send downwind to East Coast states, mostly by burning coal to generate electricity. The gases at issue here are nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides, carried on prevailing winds from 27 midwestern states to places like New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. Here's what the EPA Web site says about the health impact of nitrogen oxide:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday As for sulfur dioxide, the message is very similar:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday According to the American Lung Association, particles smaller than 10 microns (one-seventh the diameter of a human hair) can work their way deep into lung tissue. Particles smaller than .1 microns can pass through the lungs and into the blood stream.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday How dangerous are they? In one study of 545 U.S. counties between 2000 and 2007, "researchers found that people had approximately four months added to their life expectancy on average due to cleaner air. Women and people who lived in urban and densely populated counties benefited the most." Another study of six U.S. cities from 1974 to 2009 estimated that about 34,000 premature deaths a year could be prevented by reducing annual levels of particle pollution. Chronic exposure to particle pollution has been linked to "slowed lung function growth in children and teenagers; significant damage to the small airways of the lungs; increased risk of dying from lung cancer; increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease and increased risk of lower birth weight and infant mortality. "...Research into the health risks of 65,000 women over age 50 found that those who lived in areas with higher levels of particle pollution faced a much greater risk of dying from heart disease than had been previously estimated. Even women who lived within the same city faced differing risks depending on the annual levels of pollution in their neighborhood."

On Obama’s India visit, climate-change deal unlikely as Modi boosts coal production

SHAKTINAGAR, India — In the hilly Singrauli region of northern India, animals feed on ash-covered grass, smoke stings the eyes and burns the throat, and the reservoir is foul with toxins such as mercury and arsenic. Even the breakfast eggs are gray. The critically polluted landscape was once forest and fields of grain and mustard flowers. But after four decades of industrial development, this is India’s power hub. More than a dozen coal mines and power plants spread over two states generate a fifth of the country’s electric power. The region is a key driver of India’s greenhouse-gas emissions, the third-highest in the world for a single country. Coal production is slated to expand here in the coming months, part of the new government’s ambitious push to double India’s output to more than 1 billion tons annually to meet the needs of a burgeoning economy — with growth now set to outpace China’s, according to several forecasts. As President Obama arrives in India on Sunday for talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, U.S. officials had hoped to announce a deal on climate change that would be a modest complement to the historic agreement the United States reached with China in November. But little progress has been made because India and China are in very different places in their development, experts say. India’s energy deficit is staggering. An estimated 300 million people — roughly equal to the population of the United States — live without power. The national power grid was completed just last year. Renewable energy remains scant and expensive. American and Indian officials have been trying to reach a deal that would soften liability concerns and clear the way for companies to invest in India’s nuclear industry. But even if an accord is reached, proposed nuclear power reactors would take many years to complete. Coal, by contrast, is plentiful and available. India has the world’s fifth-largest coal reserves and must use the fossil fuel to power growth of 7 or 8 percent in gross domestic product, said the country’s coal secretary, Anil Swarup. “The question is, what do you have in hand? We have coal,” Swarup said. “There isn’t much choice available.” Despite international pressure, India’s climate negotiators have been reluctant to commit to specific emissions targets in part because the country must depend on coal as its primary energy source for at least the next decade, officials say. “The growth of coal is inevitable,” said Navroz K. Dubash, senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “India is still an energy-scarce society that is not able to keep the lights on in many parts of the country and still needs to build up much of its infrastructure. Given the energy needs, it is likely coal will grow — for how long and how much, it’s hard to say.” Even under the best-case scenario, coal will continue to account for more than 60 percent of the country’s power capacity until 2030, according to one government model, although renewable energy such as wind and solar power will rise from 6 percent to 18 percent. Modi has called for a “saffron revolution” of renewable energy expansion to “meet India’s growing energy demand.” An early enthusiast of renewable energy and author of a book on climate change, he helped create one of Asia’s biggest solar parks in his home state of Gujarat. His administration announced this month an ambitious goal of 100 gigawatts of solar power by 2022, requiring $100 billion in investment. India is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, a United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a report last year. Rising global temperatures could hamper economic growth, endanger food security and make the country more vulnerable to extreme weather such as floods, storms and drought, the report found. Environmentalists in India acknowledge the looming threat. But they have long argued that the United States and other nations bear a greater responsibility for the cumulative damage to the environment because historically India’s per- capita carbon emissions are low. Per-capita carbon emissions in India, measured in metric tons, are 1.7, compared with 6.2 for China and 17.6 for the United States, according to the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. “Certainly the U.S. is perceived not to have done its fair share,” said Prodipto Ghosh, a distinguished fellow at TERI, the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi. “But people hope that Obama and [Secretary of State John F.] Kerry can push the U.S. agenda forward so the U.S. can make up for lost time.” U.S. officials will be seeking a significant plan from India that can be part of a global climate deal later this year. If nothing is done, India’s emissions will continue to rise as other countries peak and decline, according to estimates. The challenge for Modi’s government, officials say, is to juggle international environmental pressure with the pressing basic needs of round-the-clock electricity and toilet access for every home, key goals for Modi’s fledgling government. Even exploiting the country’s vast coal resources will bring “huge challenges,” Swarup said. “It’s easier said than done.” Shortages and power outages still occur because the country lacks sufficient manpower and transportation links to move the coal. The previous government was enmeshed in a scandal over the allotment of mining blocks to private companies that has yet to be resolved. To mitigate the environmental impacts of doubling down on coal production, the country hopes to increase the number of its “super-critical” power plants, which burn coal with higher efficiency. India’s coal has a high ash content, which makes it dirtier and less efficient than coal in other countries. Only about 6 percent of India’s power comes from such plants. In the Singrauli region — which straddles the states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh — the rapid industrial development has brought more-reliable power to the area, along with jobs. Yet the human risks involved with continued coal dependence are on full display in the villages surrounding the power plants and mines. The small village of Chilkatand sits between a coal mine to the north and the government-owned National Thermal Power plant to the south. Living so close to these sites has severely impacted the residents of this small village, according to Manonnit Ravi, 28, a local activist. He worries about what they will do when mining is expanded. “If production increases, blasting will increase. Our houses already have cracks in them. And we don’t have an option to move anywhere,” he said. Trucks from the nearby coal mine rattle past 24 hours a day, and villagers gather by the side of the road to collect the fallen scraps for their hearths. In the evening, the smoke from those fires mixes with the pollution from mining and power generation and makes visibility difficult. Everything is coated with a thin layer of grit. Almost everyone in the village has a respiratory ailment. Others have begun to suffer more serious health effects from drinking water contaminated with mercury and arsenic and other chemicals from what environmentalists say is coal waste seeping into groundwater and being dumped into the local reservoir. Sludgy pools of floating ash gather at the shoreline. A report from Greenpeace found that residents in the area suffer unusually high rates of asthma and other respiratory ailments, tuberculosis, and chronic skin diseases. R.B. Singh, a surgeon and senior medical officer in the area, has called coal pollution a “slow poison.” “It is near impossible to go out for a morning walk or morning run here,” Singh said in an interview. “During the day it’s hot and dusty and polluted, then at night all that coal and dust settles on the ground, on the plants, on everything, because of the dew. That’s the air we inhale when we wake up and head out. You can imagine how unhealthy and uncomfortable it is. No surprise how many people report wheezing, lung and skin problems.” A spokeswoman for the power corporation, which operates three plants in the area, said in an e-mail that ash is disposed of in “scientifically designed ash ponds,” turned into a slushy substance and “is being re-circulated to a large extent at present.” But ash ponds can create their own environmental hazards. Ashwani K. Dubey, a Supreme Court lawyer who grew up in the Singrauli region, successfully argued before the country’s National Green Tribunal — a body that oversees environmental offenses — that companies working in the area should be made to supply clean water to the villages. So far about 90 filtration centers have been installed, serving about 50,000 residents. He says power plants and coal companies that contributed to polluting the area should not be able to expand until cleanup is completed and additional controls are in place. “Production should be there, but it should not be at a cost of lives of the people,” he said.

China will spend roughly the GDP of Hong Kong to fight air pollution

This is just a staggering amount of money:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University There's an old hypothesis, known as the environmental Kuznets curve, that suggests that countries will sacrifice clean air and water in favor of economic development — but only up to a certain point. Once they get rich enough, the calculus shifts, and countries start spending more on environmental goals. China appears to have reached that point.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University There are plenty of reasons for the about-face. Not only is China's air pollution triggering angry protests, but it appears to be hurting the economy, too. One recent MIT study suggested that coal pollution in northern China had shaved as much as 5.5 years off life expectancy. (Some statisticians, like Andrew Gelman, have criticized that precise estimate, though everyone agrees coal pollution has a sharply negative effect on health.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The Economist, meanwhile, wonders whether China's anti-pollution binge will curtail the nation's coal use and carbon pollution quickly enough to help the world avoid drastic global warming. (Since 2000, China has accounted for about two-thirds of the growth in the world's greenhouse-gas emissions.) That's a much trickier question.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University On one hand: Several Chinese cities are beginning to experiment with cap-and- trade policies that will set hard ceilings on the amount of greenhouse gases that factories and power plants may emit. But the targets themselves can often get weakened in negotiations between state-owned firms and local officials. What's more, the Chinese government has been cracking down on and jailing environmentalists, the sort of outsiders who would typically help ensure these policies are actually working at the local level.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University This follow-up Economist article suggests that China has plenty of reason to care about climate change: "China will suffer as much as anywhere. Already its deserts are spreading, farmland is drying out and crop yields are plateauing. Climate change may make matters worse. It has 80 million people living at sea level who are vulnerable to rising oceans and higher storm surges."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But that, in itself, isn't reason to think that a sharp reduction in emissions is inevitable — even with all those billions.

Coal pollution in China is cutting life expectancy by 5.5 years

Here's a stunning statistic: A government policy to promote coal use in Northern China may have cut the life expectancy of 500 million people by more than five years on average. That comes from a big new study in the _Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences,_ which uses a quasi-natural experiment to quantify the effects of air pollution from China's coal use in recent decades.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The study concluded that nearly 500 million people living north of the Huai River will lose an estimated 2.5 billion life years because of pollution from widespread coal burning, compared with those south of the river. The study is based on analyses of health and air-quality data from 1981 to 2000. "I was surprised by the magnitude of the effect," says MIT economist Michael Greenstone, who co-authored the paper with Yuyu Chen, Avraham Ebenstein and Hongbin Li. Researchers have long known that the fine particles released when coal is burned can have adverse health effects. But it's always been difficult to measure the exact effects of particulate pollution. After all, scientists can't just subject ordinary people to trials in which a few people are exposed to heavy pollution at random. And it's difficult to find proper controls occurring naturally.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Until now, that is. Greenstone and his colleagues found an excellent quasi-natural experiment in China. Starting in the 1950s, the Chinese government began providing free winter heating via coal boilers to people living north of the Huai River. Yet those living south of the Huai River didn't get the free boilers. That gave the researchers a way to isolate the effects of air pollution. They then analyzed official data on both air quality and health between 1981 and 2000 to get a sense for the effects. What they found was surprising. Concentrations of "total suspended particulates" were about 55 percent higher in the north, thanks to the heavy coal burning. And life expectancy for those living in the north was also about 5.5 years shorter — an effect due entirely to differences in cardio- respiratory problems, which is exactly what you'd expect if pollution was the cause. (There's a long appendix detailing all the different controls they applied.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "The original policy to provide free heating was obviously very well-intentioned," says Greenstone. "But it had a large unintended consequences that were unpredictable" — not least since so few people at the time realized the large health impacts of pollution. The authors were also able to get a more precise estimate of the impacts of particulate pollution. An extra 100 micrograms per cubic meter of "total suspended particulates" is associated with a drop in life expectancy of about three years. (In 2001, particulate levels across China were about 400 μg/m3.) "These results may help explain why China's explosive economic growth has led to relatively anemic growth in life expectancy," the paper concludes. The findings could also help the country craft environmental rules to limit air pollution in the future. At the moment, China currently burns nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined — and its officials have long maintained that coal is utterly necessary for the country's economic growth. But a more precise estimate of the health toll inflicted by air pollution could help Chinese regulators tally up all those costs and benefits — and act accordingly.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Related** : Will China ever get its air pollution problem under control?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Federal Faces: Erica Keen Thomas

**Name: Erica Keen Thomas** **Position:** **Environment, science, technology and health counselor, U.S. Embassy, Beijing, Department of State** **Best known for:** Noxious, choking air pollution has smothered Beijing and other major Chinese cities for years, making it difficult for people to breathe and causing an estimated 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010 alone. Until recently, the Chinese government routinely dismissed the public health risk. But Erica Thomas and colleagues from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing have been monitoring the air pollution and publishing that information on Twitter for Americans living there. The move has resulted not only in Americans using the data to try to reduce exposure but has informed Chinese citizens and other foreign residents about the extent of the problem. Prominent users of China’s hybrid version of Twitter and Facebook, with millions of followers, have regularly reposted the State Department’s air quality data. The access to U.S. advisories generated enough public pressure for the Chinese government to announce it will adopt improved measurement standards beginning in 2016, and for the city of Beijing and 73 other municipal authorities to begin reporting more accurate daily readings as of last year. In January 2013, when some Chinese cities experienced record-breaking air pollution levels, the Chinese government urged residents to take precautions, representing a significant shift in policy. “I’ve never seen an initiative of the U.S. government have such an immediate, dramatic impact in a country,” U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke said. “The response by the Chinese people and government on the environment has been unprecedented.” An internal debate is occurring in China over tougher pollution controls, but obstacles remain. Nonetheless, Thomas and her team have helped move that debate forward. **Government service:** After two years at the Environmental Protection Agency, Thomas moved to the Department of State’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs in 1992. She has since served in various capacities at the State Department in Washington and in Beijing and Taiwan. **Motivation for service:** Thomas joined the government because she wanted to have an impact on policy changes that might help to address some of the world’s most pressing environmental problems. **Biggest challenge:** The greatest difficulty for Thomas is living abroad far from family and friends and worrying that her efforts to mitigate her family’s exposure to severe environmental pollution are not enough and that they may suffer long-term consequences from being in China for so long. **Quote:** “I feel incredibly lucky to be able to work on enhancing cooperation between the world’s two largest economies, the two largest users of energy and the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases on policies aimed at promoting new and cleaner energy sources and reducing air, water and soil pollution.” ** — From the Partnership for Public Service  ** For a full profile, go to The Fed Page at washingtonpost.com/politics/   federal-government.

Air pollution affects preterm birthrates globally, study finds

Based on data from 183 countries, a research team from the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York extrapolated the impact of maternal exposure to different levels of outdoor pollution on preterm birthrates. The researchers concluded that PM2.5 was a “potentially substantial global risk factor” for a baby being born earlier than 37 weeks of gestation — a point in pregnancy that increases the risk of infant mortality and physical and neurological problems. The team calculated that in 2010, exposure to PM2.5 was strongly associated with 18 percent of preterm births globally, or about 2.7 million premature births. The majority of those births were in South and East Asia, the Middle East and North Africa and West sub-Saharan Africa. (Poverty, inadequate prenatal care and a mother’s age are among the other factors that also can raise the likelihood of preterm births.) “This study highlights that air pollution may contribute to a health effect, which contributes substantially to infant mortality as well as lifelong health effects in survivors,” institute researcher Christopher Malley, the study's lead author, said via email. It also underscores that comprehensive action is required to reduce levels of particulate matter, said the institute's policy director, Johan Kuylenstierna, another study author. Although natural sources of PM2.5 are implicated in preterm births, the study found human-produced sources play a much bigger role. In South and East Asia, for example, such sources were responsible for more than 80 percent of that pollution, and those two regions had the largest proportion of PM2.5-associated preterm births, according to the study. Pregnant women there are frequently exposed to indoor air pollution because of the wood and other biomass fuels they use in cooking. Fine particulate matter from natural sources, such as dust storms, contributed more to preterm birthrates in the Middle East, North Africa and West sub-Saharan Africa.   “Estimates of impact from this analysis indicate the importance of also considering pregnant women as a vulnerable population and further support the need to rapidly address air pollution as a global health threat,” said Michael Brauer, a professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, who was not part of the study.

A day in the life of Beijing’s apocalyptic smog

The smog is rolling in over Beijing. We are about to experience what the foreign media have nicknamed the “airpocalypse” — another days-long episode of choking air pollution. In fact, this is the second one in just three weeks.  We use a scale called the Air Quality Index to measure how polluted the air is on any given day. According to the phone app I use, air quality is “good,” posing no significant health risk if the reading stays under 50. If it rises above 300, the air is officially “hazardous.” That means it could cause “irritations and adverse health effects that could trigger illnesses.” Everyone is advised to avoid exercise and remain indoors. By Tuesday evening, the Air Quality Index is more than 700 in some parts of the capital. That's close to a record high. A huge shroud of polluted air has settled over much of China, and it's set to stay for days. The main source of pollution — the worst pollution cluster in the world, in fact — is the industrial heartland of Hebei, the province that surrounds Beijing. Steel and cement factories burn huge quantities of coal as China tries to keep its economy fired up. The air filters are on full blast inside my house, but the air quality monitor says I should still be wearing a mask, even indoors. I am usually pretty relaxed about air pollution — probably too relaxed — but this is starting to bug me. My wife and daughter are asleep upstairs, and I can feel the pollution in my lungs. I have a slight headache. Outside, it’s even worse. On nights like this, you really feel like you are living in a dystopian nightmare. On Wednesday morning, the sky seems a little bluer outside my house. I am hoping to play soccer tonight, but we will call off the game if the AQI is over 300. To cover my bases, I bring my soccer kit and my mask to work. But as I drive to work, you can barely see the tower blocks looming out of the smog. It’s not looking good.   The Globe and Mail's Nathan VanderKlippe is frustrated: It should be the second day back at school for his twin boys, but classes have been called off because of the smog. (The following day will be called off too.) The year, he sarcastically observes, is “off to a tremendous start.”  On the streets, some people wear masks, but many don't. Middle-class Beijingers say they have air purifiers in their homes, but they complain to us that the smog is stopping them exercising outdoors, jogging or cycling. One man says he is worried about his elderly parents, and he has told them not to go grocery shopping. A mother says her children have been stuck indoors for more than a week, and they aren't happy. It's even worse for the poorer members of society. A woman selling toys on the street says business is depressed by the smog, but she has no choice but to be out there. A street cleaner says the mask distributed by his work unit helps. Without it, he'd have a sore throat at the end of the day. It's 5 p.m. and the AQI is still over 300. Soccer has been canceled, which really gets me down. I make revised plans to play on Sunday morning instead — if the smog lifts by then.

China wants cleaner air — without an environmental movement

Even by China’s standards, it has been a contradictory couple of weeks on the environment. First, a powerful documentary on air pollution, produced with official support, was released online and swiftly went viral, garnering more than 200 million views within days before being blocked by government censors. Today all references to the film have been scrubbed from the Chinese Internet, more effectively than the air ever could be. On the sidelines of the annual meeting of the country’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, President Xi Jinping vowed to punish “violators” who destroy the environment “with an iron hand.” Premier Li Keqiang opened the two-week-long NPC gathering by calling pollution “a blight on people’s quality of life” and promised significant cuts in emissions. On Sunday, he ended the meetings with a promise not to end his government’s “war on pollution” until it reached its goal, and a pledge that the law would work “as a powerful, effective tool to control pollution — and would not be as soft as a cotton swab.” Yet as factories, trucks and oil companies continued to flout environmental regulations, police had different targets in their sights. On March 6, an activist in the southern city of Guangzhou who reposted information on social media about a planned gathering of “mothers concerned about the harm of smog” was arrested and put in detention for 14 days; two others were held overnight in Xi’an for brandishing placards blaming the government for the smog. So is the government serious, or is it all a show? And if it really wants to improve the environment, what is wrong with a little public support and pressure? The answers lie within the complex, many-headed nature of China’s communist government and the huge challenges involved in addressing air pollution. The Communist Party, while obsessed with control and distrustful of public participation, recognizes that this is a huge touchstone issue for the urban middle class. China is experiencing what Wang Tao of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing calls “the early tides of a sea change” when it comes to energy and the environment. Yet contradictions and power struggles are often at their sharpest when the tides are turning. “The environment ministry certainly wants to get more power, and it can see huge pressure from the public for a better environment,” he said. “But there is resistance from vested interests, and a power struggle over who should lead this process, in terms of policies and setting standards.” China burns more coal than the rest of the world combined, but last year — against expectations — coal consumption fell by 2.9 percent, its first decline in living memory. Electricity generation by coal-fired power plants also fell for the first time in decades; coal- and steel-producing provinces that long sat at the top of the country’s economic growth tables tumbled to the bottom of the pile. Part of the reason is China’s economic slowdown, which has hit heavy industry and the real estate sector hardest, and highlighted significant overcapacity. But government measures to cap coal and steel production, enforce stricter emissions targets and close down some illegal mines and furnaces have had an impact, too. Enter Chai Jing, a well-known former anchor for state-run China Central Television, whose 104-minute long documentary “Under the Dome” was released online just days before the NPC meeting convened. It was passionate and hard-hitting, well-researched and slickly produced. Chai framed her concerns as the mother of a newborn girl, worried about the poisons her daughter and countless Chinese children were breathing in. Made with the support of officials from the Ministry of Environmental Protection, it exposed their powerlessness to set adequate standards and enforce those that exist. It described a ministry that was toothless against a steel industry that ignores environmental rules yet can’t be challenged because it employs tens of millions of people; helpless against powerful state-run oil companies selling dirty fuel to raise their profits; and unable even to stop trucks belching thick plumes of smoke from infesting Beijing’s streets. But the film also offered hope, in the experience of London and Los Angeles in cleaning the air without damaging the economy, and hope in the power of public participation to shame polluters. It was released Feb. 28 and promoted by the state-run People’s Daily Online Web site. By the next day, it had garnered 100 million views, even as the first instructions were being issued to state media outlets not to promote it. The new environmental protection minister, Chen Jining, who had been parachuted into government from academia just a month before, sent Chai a text message that day congratulating her. He told reporters that the film reminded him of “Silent Spring,” the 1962 book by Rachel Carson that inspired the U.S. environmental movement. The film may not go down in history in quite the same way as Carson’s book, not least because no comparable environmental movement will be allowed in China. Nor was it the first time that eyes had been opened here. Still, Chai’s film has informed and energized the debate, asking “questions that were on everybody’s mind but had been suppressed,” said Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley and founder of the China Digital Times Web site. Yet by exposing some of the vested interests behind the smog, the film probably put important noses out of joint; its viral reception also may have shocked and frightened the party hierarchy. While the initial social media reaction had been very positive, online attacks on Chai, both personal and factual, mounted in subsequent days. By March 6, censors ordered it removed from the Chinese Internet entirely: it can still be viewed on YouTube, with English subtitles, but that Web site is blocked in China. Xi agreed to a landmark deal with President Obama last November to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The question now is how fast and how far he is prepared to move to address the issues raised by “Under the Dome.” Xiao says the president’s agenda is driven by a desire for popular support. But while addressing air pollution will win him credit among the middle class, Xi will be wary of undermining the economy and causing discontent in the country’s industrial heartland, experts said. Xi also will be wary of the risk that public unhappiness over the environment could translate into discontent with one-party rule. Yet environmentalists worry that a top-down approach to fighting pollution will be much less effective than one in which the public is allowed to participate. “Xi needs popular support, but he is afraid of the public having real participation,” said Xiao, adding, “The party wont let anything generate the public conversation or set the agenda without them driving it.” Xu Yangjingjing and Liu Liu contributed to this report. China, U.S. agree to limit greenhouse gases Dramatic photos illustrate China’s ‘inconvenient truth’ about its hideous air Study: Pollution from Chinese factories is harming air quality on U.S. West Coast

The Obama administration gives India a shove on climate change

He wouldn’t put it this way, but Secretary of State John Kerry announced this week that the U.S. government will turn the screws on India over the country’s environmental record.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In a joint event, the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency declared that they will expand the EPA’s AirNow pollution program to more U.S. embassies around the world, monitoring local air quality and releasing their findings on a user-friendly platform. The embassy in Delhi will be among the first to see AirNow expansion. This is a bold challenge to the Indian government that could become an extremely effective exercise of soft power. Kerry’s first stated motivation is to protect Americans traveling or living abroad — particularly those with respiratory illnesses that nasty particulate matter known as PM 2.5 might inflame. “We have tens of thousands of U.S. government workers who are employed in some 150 posts around the world,” he said Wednesday, “and in many of the cities where those posts are located, believe me, it can get hard to have regular access to reliable PM 2.5 data.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But that is not the only — or, perhaps, even the primary — reason for State’s move. Global air quality monitoring will also offer clear and accurate information to foreign citizens choking under their governments’ haze of environmental neglect. Embassy air monitoring is among the most powerful tools the State Department has to pressure countries to change policy. That’s what happened after the U.S. embassy in Beijing began releasing air quality information, to the Chinese government’s distress.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “There was a time when poor visibility in cities like Beijing was blamed simply on excessive fog,” Kerry explained. “But today, in part because of expanded air-quality monitoring in cities throughout China, the Chinese government is now deeply committed to getting the pollution under control.” What Kerry didn’t explain fully is why India is top on the list for new monitoring. Delhi is perhaps the most polluted city on the planet. In a very rough estimate, Bloomberg News calculated that President Obama would lose 6 hours of his life following a brief visit to the city last month. Cars, diesel generators, coal burning — all of these sources pump out noxious pollution that fogs the ambient air.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But they all also produce a lot of climate change-inducing carbon dioxide emissions, and that fact reveals Kerry’s underlying diplomatic objective. India is now the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, recently surpassing the European Union. Yet the country is doing the least among the large emitters to combat global warming. Following U.S. embassy air monitoring, the Chinese government made a serious emissions commitment last fall. The Europeans have already made big cuts and plan more. The EPA is clamping down on carbon dioxide in the United States. By contrast, India’s leaders didn’t give much on climate change when Obama visited last month. The president’s disappointment was thinly veiled.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico World leaders will meet at the end of this year to complete a global climate agreement. The Obama administration apparently has not given up on eliciting a more impressive commitment from India than observers expect. Nor should it.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But even if AirNow monitoring doesn’t work a diplomatic miracle in time for the Paris conference, at least the fact that India’s pollution problem hurts its people will be well-articulated. That can only increase public pressure to clean up India’s development strategy. **Update, 2:30 p.m., Feb. 21:** Slight edits made above for clarity.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Amid smoggy days in London, growing calls to clean up Europe’s toxic air

LONDON — It’s Christmastime on Oxford Street. Brilliant displays of white lights rain from above. Decked-out shoppers dash from one gaudy sale to the next. And Johnny Conquest breathes in poison. “The air is horrible. The taxis stop right here, and when they take off, boom, you can taste it,” says the 67-year-old as the heavenly smell of the caramel peanuts he hawks from a humble street stall mingles with the sickly stench of diesel. “I’m on the worst corner in London.” In at least one important respect, it may be the worst in the world. London has come a long way since the days when its infamous coal-fired pollution shrouded Sherlock in a permanent haze or struck at least 4,000 residents dead in less than a week. But the city’s overreliance on diesel-powered vehicles has given it a dubious distinction: a global leader in nitrogen dioxide, a particularly noxious pollutant that shortens the lives of thousands of Londoners a year. Here and in cities across environmentally minded Europe, NO2 levels are substantially higher than in North America, or even in Asian and African megacities whose names have become bywords for dirty air. And that is all because of decades of government incentives designed to spur the purchase of supposedly cleaner diesel cars and trucks. “It’s a complete policy failure,” said Gary Fuller, who directs an air- quality-study center at King’s College London. “No one could defend this.” Rather than try, European mayors are declaring war on diesel, hoping to give their cities a clean start. This month, mayors of three major European capitals, plus Mexico City, announced ambitious plans to ban all diesel vehicles within the next decade. “We can no longer tolerate air pollution and the health problems and deaths it causes, particularly for our most vulnerable citizens,” said Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who was joined in the pledge by the mayors of Athens and Madrid. London’s new mayor, Sadiq Khan, has not gone as far — yet. But he has made reducing air pollution a central pillar of his young administration, more than doubling funding for clean-air campaigns with a billion-dollar commitment and announcing plans that will radically transform the city’s fleet of iconic — but diesel-dependent — taxis and buses. “With nearly 10,000 Londoners dying early every year due to air pollution, tackling poor air quality is a public health emergency,” Khan said in announcing the moves. The scale of the challenge has been on display recently in cities across the continent. Paris this month experienced its worst air-pollution episode in a decade, with a thick blanket of ugly air smothering the City of Light for days. Municipal leaders temporarily made public transit free to cut cars from the roads. In Milan, safe limits on dangerous fine particles were breached each day for a week, prompting the city council to stiffen a ban on the worst-polluting diesel vehicles. Wood-burning fires also were forbidden, a decision that echoed that of a town near Naples, which last year outlawed pizza-making in a bid to cleanse its choking air. London, too, has been feeling the effects, with air-quality-monitoring stations this month showing some of the worst pollutant levels in recent years. The forecast for the coming days prompted one green activist to quip that Santa should take care not to exert himself during his rounds in Britain. But as a habitual London visitor, Santa will have seen worse over the city’s long history. Air quality has been a problem in London since at least the Middle Ages. Rapid industrialization and urban growth lent a chronically smoky backdrop to literature throughout the Victorian period. In December 1952, coal-belching homes and factories enveloped London in smog so thick that air, rail and road traffic was halted for five days as cows dropped dead in their fields and people suffocated on the streets. That event — known as the Great Smog — inspired the world’s first clean-air legislation four years later. The regulation of furnaces and fireplaces, plus the banning of coal in key areas, ushered in dramatic improvements. But it also gave lawmakers the illusion that the problem of urban air pollution had been solved. A fateful bet on diesel has brought it back with a vengeance. Governments across Europe have aggressively promoted diesel vehicles, reasoning that diesel’s lower carbon-dioxide output makes it gentler on the planet than gasoline. In London, the streets are filled with diesel-powered buses and taxis. Continent-wide, diesel accounts for about half the car market. But diesel has one glaring disadvantage: It is a major source of NO2, a pollutant that stunts lung growth and has been linked to a range of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The diesel push has meant that although air in Europe is far cleaner overall than in many parts of the globe, it still can be — and often is — deadly. “It’s been a public health catastrophe on an unimaginable scale,” said Simon Birkett, founder and director of the advocacy group Clean Air in London. “We’ll probably never know the full extent of the impact.” In particularly traffic-swollen areas of central London, it took just the first eight days of 2016 to breach the European Union’s NO2 limits for the entire year. Samantha Walker, policy director for Asthma UK, said that such high concentrations of pollutants can bring on an attack in minutes and that prolonged exposure among children can cause health impacts that last a lifetime. Citing those health costs, Khan, London’s mayor since May, has launched plans to expand zones in the capital where only low-emission vehicles can tread, and to replace thousands of diesel-powered buses and taxis with hybrid and fully electric vehicles. Birkett, the activist, said Khan deserves plaudits for such moves. But he also urged the mayor to go further by joining Paris, Madrid, Athens and Mexico City in pledging to eliminate diesel vehicles altogether by 2025. “There’s an opportunity here to re-engineer cities,” Birkett said. “We need to ban diesel just like we banned coal 60 years ago.” Fuller, the King’s College scientist, said an outright diesel ban would be “a huge challenge” for any city given the dependence on diesel for public transit and delivery trucks. Air-quality solutions, Fuller said, need to be “holistic,” with a focus not just on what comes out of a vehicle’s tailpipe but also on persuading people to abandon their cars altogether in favor of public transit, walking and biking. In a sprawling and ancient city such as London, that is not always easy. For years, officials have batted around the idea of pedestrianizing Oxford Street, London’s blinged-out central shopping district. There is just one problem. “There’s nowhere else for the traffic to go,” said Conquest, the sidewalk peanut vendor. Instead of a walker’s paradise, Oxford Street remains a vehicle-clogged dystopia, with some of the world’s worst NO2 levels. Buses and taxis chug along emitting diesel fumes day and night, while tall buildings trap the noxious gases for pedestrians to breathe. Conquest, a slight and spry man who has been selling his wares on Oxford Street for 50 years, said he has been lucky. He stays in shape and has been spared the health effects that have hobbled so many others. But he says he does not doubt that decades spent breathing toxic air have taken their toll. “I run marathons,” he said. “I would have won a few of them if I hadn’t been standing on this corner.”

‘The Ganges is our mother, there won’t be any future if she dies’

India’s Ganges River is one of the most revered in the world; it is also one of the most polluted. Stretching some 1,500 miles from its origins in the Himalayas to its mouth in the Bay of Bengal, the river is worshiped by many Hindus and is a water source for an estimated 400 million people. Those who worship the river believe that it has curative powers and that immersion in its waters can absolve them of sins. Bodies are burned along its banks and ashes are tossed into the water, where they mix with other pollutants, include waste from tanneries along the way. Shortly after Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister in 2014, he pledged to spearhead an effort to clean up the Ganges, building more treatment plants and moving more than 400 tanneries away from the river. But that estimated $3 billion cleanup plan has faltered. The continued degradation of the Ganges inspires sadness among many who revere it. Ashok Kumar, 66, a priest from Mirzapur, a brass ware hub near the river, tells Reuters, “I feel sad about what’s happening around us. The Ganges is getting dirty day by day but nobody cares. Not even its children . ….The Ganges is our mother, there won’t be any future if she dies.” Reuters photographer Danish Siddiqui traveled along the sprawling course of the Ganges, exploring the conditions that have led some people to say that the storied river is dying. Here’s some of what he saw. More In Sight:

Air pollution doesn’t just make breathing harder for humans. In the Pacific, fish are choking, too.

In the Pacific Ocean, billions of tiny creatures are literally eating our air pollution. The pollution starts out as an enormous cloud generated by industries in east Asia near Japan, China, the Koreas and Russia. For decades it has formed and floated into the coastal Pacific, where currents carry it thousands of miles away in a pattern that flows around Hawaii into the warm water tropics. That’s where phytoplankton go to town on the excess iron and nitrogen in the pollution. Normally, dining tropical phytoplankton — the foundation of a food web on which all life there depends — are good because the activity actually creates oxygen near the water’s surface, as a new study released Monday explains. But as they gorge themselves on excess nutrients, they create organic matter that sinks into the deeper ocean and is feasted on by microscopic bacteria. That’s bad because the latter sucks away oxygen in warm ocean water that has less to start with. “Many living organisms depend on oxygen that is dissolved in seawater,” said Taka Ito, an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the lead author of the study published in Nature Geoscience. “So if it gets low enough, it can cause problems, and it might change habitats for marine organisms.” That’s one way of saying it’s likely killing them by the thousands, worsening the problem of overfishing by lowering the potential catch of seafood on which much of the world depends, particularly on the coasts. Researchers have known for a long time that excess dust is falling on ocean coasts and that air pollution is making that problem much worse. But the study’s co-author, Athanasios Nenes, another Georgia Tech professor, said it is the first to show that strong currents carry it to the deep. “People never thought that it gets transported thousands of miles away,” Nenes said in an interview Sunday. The only way to stop the process, he said, is to “control emissions of sulfur and nitrogen” as air pollution for factories and power plants — an effort that the leaders of 170 nations agreed to undertake at climate talks in Paris last year, knowing it faced enormous political challenges. Low-oxygen “hypoxic events” known as dead zones often occur near coasts. But Nenes said what’s happening in the Pacific is bigger and more scary. “We’re talking about a vast amount of deep ocean water being turned into a dead zone.”  “Marlin can hunt in waters a half mile down, and sailfish often head to deep waters too,” Welch noted. “Yet in more and more places around the world, these predators are sticking near the surface, rarely using their formidable power to plunge into the depths to chase prey. The discovery of this behavioral quirk in fish built for diving offers some of the most tangible evidence of a disturbing trend: Warming temperatures are sucking oxygen out of waters even far out at sea, making enormous stretches of deep ocean hostile to marine life.” Welch quoted William Gilly, a marine biologist with Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, who noted that “200 meters down, there is a freight train of low-oxygen water barreling toward the surface.” There’s a lot of talk about issues affecting the ocean, he added, but “this one hasn’t gotten much attention.” Oxygen depletion was already identified by scientists as a problem in the era of global warming because warm water holds less of it. But since the 1970s, it was happening more rapidly in the tropical Pacific, faster than rising temperatures could explain. Like other scientists, Ito and Nenes were vexed by these plummeting levels. So they started a mission of discovery. They developed a model that looked at the atmospheric chemistry and ocean circulation, according to a university statement. The model mapped how “polluted, iron-rich dust that settles over the Northern Pacific gets carried by ocean currents east toward North America, down the coast and then back west along the equator.” The pair kept an eye on water temperature, varying ocean currents and oxygen levels and found a link. From that they drew a grim conclusion: “If the pollution continues to supply excess nutrients, the process of the decomposition depletes oxygen from the deeper waters, and this deep oxygen is not easily replaced. “Like us breathing in oxygen and exhaling CO2, the bacteria consume oxygen in the subsurface ocean, and there is a tendency to deplete more oxygen,” Ito said, explaining the findings of the study. “The scientific community always thought that the impact of air pollution is felt in the vicinity of where it deposits ,” said Nenes. “This study shows that the iron can circulate across the ocean and affect ecosystems thousands of kilometers away.”

Beijing issues first red alert for air pollution — but there’s a silver lining in the smog

Believe it or not, the air quality in the Chinese capital is actually improving. Just not very fast. On Monday, the Beijing municipal government issued its first “red alert” for smog, urging schools to close, restricting traffic and closing down construction sites for three days starting Tuesday. The decision underlines what everybody knows: decades of unbridled economic growth, corruption and utter disregard for environmental safety have combined to produce some of the deadliest air in planetary history. Read: Air pollution in China is killing 1.6 million people a year.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But what is perhaps less well known is that the capital’s air is heading for what could be its best year in more than a decade. And perhaps, somewhere in the choking smog that settled over Beijing this week, there is the smallest sliver of a silver lining: at least the government is finally taking some action, in response to public pressure. Heavy smog has settled over Beijing from Sunday night and is forecast to intensify through Thursday, prompting the government to impose the highest level of alert on its four-color scale for the first time. Yet by the city’s terrible standards, the air quality has actually been far worse: concentration of PM2.5 small particles were measured at 224 micrograms per cubic meter at 8 p.m., classified merely as “very unhealthy” by international guidelines, which recommend that people with heart or lung disease, older adults and children to avoid all physical activity outdoors. Last week, the concentration of PM2.5 had been much higher – more than 500 micrograms per cubic meter at one point, worse than “hazardous” and pretty much off the scale as far as those guidelines go. That's more than 20 times World Health Organization recommended levels -- yet the city government’s alert level had been maintained at “orange.” The government, perhaps reluctant to incur the economic costs that a red alert would have entailed, came in for heavy criticism on social media – and implicitly from the central government – for failing to impose a red alert last week. On Sunday, Environmental Protection Minister Chen Jining vowed to punish agencies and officials for any failure to quickly implement a pollution emergency response plan, the state-run Global Times tabloid reported. “This year is still on track to be by far the best for air pollution on record, but the fact that these horrendous episodes can still happen shows how far there is to go to solve the problem,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, an energy campaigner at Greenpeace International. He said he was looking at satellite data since 2003 and U.S. Embassy data since 2009. Despite a fall-off in coal consumption linked to a slowdown in Chinese industry, coal use remains “massive” in the provinces surrounding Beijing, while power plants and factories are still violating emissions standards, he said. Read: China confronts the pain of kicking its coal addiction    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “The episodes show that it is absolutely crucial to ramp up reductions in coal use, as well as enforcement of strict emission limits for power plants and industry, even with the leveling off of growth in manufacturing sectors,” he said. Myllyvirta said the worst episodes occur when slow-moving air masses spend days accumulating pollution in the industrial heartland before reaching Beijing. Here's a map that shows the wind patterns that are bringing the pollution to Beijing, from Greenpeace analysis using the U.S. NOAA Hysplit model. “On a positive note, it is commendable that Beijing officials initiated the alert based on forecasts before the pollution levels rose to extreme range,” said Myllyvirta. “This is something that they have found hard to do in the past.” Under the rules, cars with odd and even number plates will be kept off the roads on alternate days, and some industrial enterprises will have to close. On social media, some users welcomed the move to impose a red alert, but others remained unconvinced that the government would impose costs on powerful industrial vested interests. “Can you not treat us like we are fools,” one user posted. “Dare you close down all the coal and chemical enterprises tomorrow?” Last week, there was even more anger about an issue that ranks toward the top of Chinese citizens' concerns. “The perks of China’s development are not shared by all its citizens, but its ill effects are tasted by everyone,” one user wrote in a post later deleted by censors. “Without moral and legal restraints, development could be a disaster.” Xu Jing contributed to this report.

A documentary on air pollution sparks a code red in China

A DOCUMENTARY  that just appeared in China opens with a narrator on a stage, wearing a simple white blouse and blue jeans. The former television journalist who produced the film, Chai Jing, describes her anxiety when a daughter was born with an illness that may have been caused by air pollution and that requires surgery. She then delivers a devastating portrait of how China’s pollution has become a major threat to health. In one segment illustrating how air particles infiltrate the human organism, an animated character representing a nasty polluting particle warns, “Be terrified, humans!” With its simplicity and frightening message, the 104-minute film, “Under the Dome,” attracted a huge online audience when it was released this month. It was posted on major Chinese Web sites — including that of the official People’s Daily — and appeared to have the support of some government officials. China’s new environment minister welcomed the release and compared the film to Rachel Carson’s landmark 1962 book, “Silent Spring.” Hundreds of millions of Chinese viewed the movie in the days after its release. Then, on March 6, the screen went blank. Chinese propaganda authorities ordered all news outlets and Internet services to take down the film and stop reporting on it. One leaked directive from the Shanghai censor insisted that media outlets “must absolutely discontinue coverage” of the film and its creator, “as well as reports, commentaries, interviews, and special topics that concern or extend to this film.” The movie’s popularity underscores the growing public discomfort at the toll pollution is taking. As the film points out, China’s embrace of capitalism led many people to ignore or excuse dirty air a generation ago. Ms. Chai recalls that people referred to it as “fog,” not smog. But in recent years, as a rising middle class has prospered, many have grown less tolerant. Young parents have been particularly alarmed at the potential dangers to children from pollution and contaminated food. Ms. Chai recounts how over one year she kept her daughter indoors for 175 days out of fear of the hazards in the air. The release of the film, followed by the censor’s blackout, suggests competing interests are at work in China despite the monopoly on power enjoyed by the Communist Party. Clearly the documentary could not have appeared without some tacit or direct support from official quarters. This often happens in authoritarian systems: a newspaper or filmmaker is allowed to campaign for rectifying some failure, within careful boundaries of not challenging the system itself. “Under the Dome” upset some special interests, such as polluting companies, but it did not take on China’s closed political system. However, audience enthusiasm may go where the filmmaker dared not. Once the film was released and caused a sensation, the party-state apparatus panicked. Censoring it was clumsy, typical of the regime. But the people living under the dome won’t soon forget what they saw, nor what they see and breathe every day. **Read more on this issue:** The Post’s View: Can China escape its choking air pollution? The Post’s View: Chinese state media open up about Beijing smog

These maps show the best places to put solar and wind power. (It’s not where you think.)

At first glance, it might seem obvious where the United States should focus on building more renewable energy. Stick the solar panels in sunny Arizona and hoist up the wind turbines on the gusty Great Plains, right? Well, not necessarily. A recent study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University offered another way to look at the issue. A solar panel built in cloudy New Jersey can actually offer _more_ overall benefits than one built in Arizona — when you take into account all the carbon dioxide and other pollutants that get reduced. Likewise, a new wind farm in West Virginia can deliver more health benefits than one built in California, at least in the short term.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The reason, say the researchers, is that you have to take into account the sort of energy that's likely to be displaced by the new solar panels and wind turbines. Out in Texas or Oklahoma, wind turbines would crowd out relatively clean natural gas-fired plants. That would cut down on carbon-dioxide emissions and other pollutants. But it's not quite as big a deal as, say, building a wind farm in Ohio — where the wind would displace coal power and lead to a 20 percent bigger reduction in pollutants that are heating the planet or causing respiratory problems. The regions with the biggest wind or solar resources aren't always the most beneficial places to build renewable energy, at least in the very near term. Here's a map of the most wind-rich areas in the United States (the redder the breezier): *[WSU]: Wayne State University And next we have a map of where wind power would deliver the most benefits, once you factor in the reductions from pollutants like sulfur or particulates, which have been linked to health problems from asthma to heart attacks: *[WSU]: Wayne State University By the same metric, here are the most beneficial places to stick solar panels: *[WSU]: Wayne State University Note that California sees somewhat fewer benefits — in part because the state has _already_ spent so many years cleaning up its energy supply compared with other states.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Now, to be clear, the researchers aren't saying that California's clean-energy spree in recent years has been pointless. Switching from natural gas to renewable energy has still led to a drop in carbon-dioxide emissions, which helps slow the pace of climate change at the margins and curbs other pollutants. The authors note that "the social benefits from existing wind farms are roughly 60% higher than the cost of the Production Tax Credit, an important federal subsidy for wind energy." But the authors do suggest that Congress could take these regional variations into account when structuring tax benefits for clean energy. "[T]hat same investment," they note, "could achieve greater health, environmental, and climate benefits if it were differentiated by region." One final point: This study largely takes into account the existing power grid in the United States and focuses on near-term benefits. But in theory, it would also be possible to build gigantic wind farms in the Great Plains and then transmit that electricity all over the United States, to places like Ohio and West Virginia, through new high-voltage transmission lines. That would be a way of developing the most promising resources _and_ delivering high benefits.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But there's a big hitch. As Matthew Wald explained in the New York Times this weekend, these grand schemes always run afoul of the balkanized nature of the power grid. "The technology, the engineering skill and even the money are all available, experts say, but the ability to reach agreement on such a grid is not," Wald wrote. "For now, there is simply no momentum for a transmission system that would connect the best sites for renewable energy with the biggest areas of demand."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Further reading:** All credit to David Biello for the link to the Carnegie Mellon study, which was written by Kyle Siler-Evans, Inês Lima Azevedoa, M. Granger Morgana, and Jay Apt and published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Here are some of the assumptions the study made.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Protesters take to streets as New Delhi chokes under smoke cloud

NEW DELHI — Mask-wearing protesters took to the streets of the Indian capital Sunday as the city remained blanketed under a cloud of toxic smoke that has lingered for a week and sparked anger at the government’s slow response. Thousands of schools have been shuttered, cricket matches canceled and residents warned to stay inside as the air pollution crisis in New Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan region — deemed an “emergency situation” by the environment minister Saturday — stretched into its seventh day. Patients with breathing problems inundated hospitals and clinics, and residents waited in line to buy pricey face masks — which often sold out. “We have never seen something like this. This time, things are really bad,” said P.S. Walia, 44, a father of two who was at a protest Sunday. He has shuttered his house, stopped taking morning walks and kept his kids indoors this past week to protect them from the stinging air. Experts said low winds, holiday fireworks residue and crop-burning in neighboring states contributed to the haze, which reduced visibility at the airport to a 17-year low last week. Air-quality data from the U.S. Embassy’s air monitor — which measures the particulate pollutant known as PM 2.5 — averaged 640 this week, more than six times the level deemed acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency. On Sunday, Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, said the city would undertake emergency measures to address the “need of the hour,” including banning construction activity for five days, limiting diesel-generator use, water-treating dusty roads and temporarily closing a coal-fired power plant. The city’s schools will remain shut for three days, he said. Environmental experts applauded the move but say the city — the 11th-most- polluted in the world, according to the World Health Organization — needs far more stringent long-term solutions. Last week, the country’s environmental court had chided both the central and state governments for “shifting blame” and not taking action to address the problem. “Emergency measures are an absolute necessity right now because the levels we are seeing are too horrendous,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, head of the Center for Science and Environment’s air pollution and clean transportation program. But longer-term fixes — expanding public transport, permanently closing aging coal-fired plants and controlling waste-burning — are necessary, she said. Kejriwal said Saturday that farmers in the neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana had illegally burned 16 to 20 million tons of crop waste in the past month, turning the capital into a “gas chamber.” The states’ environment ministers are set to meet Monday to come up with a plan to address the problem. “So much is caused by the burning of crops. The government has to do something,” Satish Mittal, a roadside tea-stall owner, said Sunday. Kejriwal’s government has made attempts to control pollution, including two trials of a controversial plan this year to limit car use by odd- or even- number license plates, a program that reduced traffic but did not have the dramatic effect on air quality some had hoped for. Hundreds gathered for a protest walk in the tech suburb of Gurgaon on Saturday and at a rally near Parliament in New Delhi on Sunday. There, the masked protesters were joined by schoolchildren with hand-lettered signs that said “Be the solution to the pollution” and “Help Delhi Breathe.” One of the organizers, Shivani Gupta, 41, a jewelry designer, said her son — who has become severely asthmatic — was hospitalized three times last year because of pollution. The family has even taken to wearing protective masks inside their house. “My husband is sick, and my child is sick,” she said. “This is not how we can live our lives.” Swati Gupta contributed to this report. _CORRECTION: This article has been updated to include the correct figures for the amount of crop waste burned near New Delhi in the previous month._

This documentary went viral in China. Then it was censored. It won’t be forgotten

Every so often a seminal book or powerful movie alters the way we see the world around us. In the past three weeks, an online documentary about air pollution in China called “Under the Dome” has done exactly that for the peoples’ republic. Made by a well-known China Central Television newscaster Chai Jing, the film drew more than 150 million viewers in the first days after Chai posted it online. In the film, Chai, dressed casually in jeans and a white blouse, paces back and forth on a stage in what is essentially a 143-minute TED talk – with devastating effect. In three weeks, it has gone from Internet sensation, to being blocked by government censors, to being the subject of a question to Premier Li Keqiang at a press conference on Sunday where Li vowed that the government would do more to combat pollution. The film has done this not so much by breaking news so much as bringing it all together. Chai combines personal heart-tugging narrative, investigative reporting and explanatory skills to dissect the reasons for the dire air pollution that plagues Chinese cities. She starts off talking about her new-born daughter, whom she keeps inside “like a prisoner” on extremely bad air days – nearly half of the days in 2014. Chai shows an interview she conducted in 2004 with a six-year old girl. “Have you ever seen a real star?” Chai asks. “No,” says the child. “What about blue sky?” Chai asks. “I’ve seen one that’s a little blue,” the child replies. “What about white clouds?” Chai asks. “No, I haven’t,” the child replies. Chai **** has a gentle manner, but her documentary goes on to take a tough and sophisticated look at self-interested state-owned coal and oil companies, impotent environmental regulators, and ineffective national legislation. She travels with environmental inspectors who stop trucks at night, visit steel plants, and raid retailers of dirty motor fuel. She consults scientists and explains why small particles emitted by the nation’s booming number of automobiles are particularly lethal.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The film has a drumbeat of statistics, like a funeral march. The level of small particles routinely runs more than ten times international standards. Of the rivers in Shanxi,88.4 percent polluted, 62 percent no longer usable. In one river, the level of toxic benzopyrene has reached 290 times the regulatory limit. The number of times a long-standing environmental regulation has been enforced: zero. In the end, Chai does something few Chinese ever do publicly: She calls for action, urging her fellow citizens to “stand up,” report violations of environmental laws and demand change. And here is where she probably crossed one of Chinese Communist Party’s red lines, embracing an action generated from below rather than orchestrated from above. “It’s tens of million of ordinary people,” she says in the film. “One day they say ‘no.’ I’m not satisfied. I don’t want to wait. I’m not going to shirk the responsibility. I’m going to stand up and do something. I’m going to do it right now. At this moment. At this place.” Some have compared her film to Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring,” the 1962 book on pesticides that led to a ban on DDT and—along with the Santa Barbara oil spill off California and Ohio’s Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969—helped spur the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Others compare Chai’s work to Al Gore’s film “Inconvenient Truth,” his wake-up call about climate change. “’Silent Spring’ was a low-tech version of what the film did,” said Jennifer Turner, director of the China Environment Forum at the Wilson Center. “It made the problem very personal and also understandable. I was struck with how it was so much from the heart. She really gave voice to a lot of unspoken fears people have in China. You can’t look out at a wall of gray without being scared.” While “Under the Dome” called for action, the action the Chinese government took wasn’t what Chai had in mind. After the initial surge in viewers for the documentary, the government blocked access to the online video. “The censorship is unfortunate since it will prevent an active discussion taking place in mainland China around the film,” said Joanna Lewis, a professor of science, technology and international affairs at Georgetown University. “China is not without stringent environmental regulations. But without added public pressure, the enforcement of such policies is likely to remain a low priority for many officials.” Lewis added, however, that “it is difficult to imagine the government creating a space for the public to mobilize around environmental protection out of concern that such mobilization could spill over into other issues and create broader social instability.” On Sunday, at the closing press conference of the National People’s Congress, a reporter from the Huffington Post asked Chinese Premier Li Keqiang what the government was going to do about some of the accusations in the film. Rather than attack the film, he replied:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Chinese government finds itself in a delicate spot. After all, as Li notes, the government has been taking some bold steps to try to get air pollution—and greenhouse gas emissions—under control. It is experimenting with cap and trade systems in several cities. It is spending billions to promote wind and solar power. And in an important breakthrough at a meeting with President Obama, China’s leader Xi Jinping pledged to put a cap on its carbon emissions by 2030. Yet whereas the United States—under President Nixon—reacted to growing outrage about environmental hazards by creating a new agency and new regulations, the Chinese government already has environmental agencies and regulation. In China, the problem isn’t an absence of regulatory structure, it’s the wholesale failure of that structure, in which Chinese industry, much of it state-owned, disregards regulations, sets its own standards, or manages to play off different parts of the bureaucracy against one another. In “Under the Dome,” heavy truck makers don’t install pollution control devices and use phony compliance stickers instead. Self-regulating oil refiners produce diesel with high sulfur content. Steel manufacturers lack pollution controls while many coal-fired power plants turn off scrubbers that reduce soot and acid rain because the scrubbers use a little bit of power that could otherwise be sold. Chai shows all this in a most personal and tangible way. She goes with inspectors from the ministry of environmental protection to take samples of diesel fuel being sold along with lottery tickets in a small village. The owner says he has never heard of the bureau and the diesel quality is none of their business. When told by an inspector that the agency has the obligation to take samples, he says “you have the obligation but not the authority.” At one point she asks a regulator who failed to close down a steel mill whether he is toothless. The regulator responds that he’s afraid to open his mouth because people will see he has no teeth. There are so many startling aspects to “Under the Dome”: The fact that someone, especially a media-savvy former state television personality, would think of doing it; the use of the Internet to spread information very quickly; the way in which middle class Chinese, once obsessed purely with economic gains, are outraged about the quality of life; the way some well-intentioned government reforms open a Pandora’s Box of previous neglect; and the suggestion that people are angry enough to step forward. “Despite the censorship of ‘Under the Dome,’ there are still reasons to be hopeful about the future of China’s environment,” said Georgetown’s Lewis. “China has become far more confident on the international stage in its environmental diplomacy, and this will hopefully lead to increased confidence in allowing for difficult conversations about the tradeoff between environmental protection and economic growth at home.”

Chinese state media open up about Beijing smog

ADD AIR pollution to the list of challenges that China’s new leadership must address to satisfy its increasingly restless citizenry. Over the weekend, Beijing and more than 30 other cities were enveloped by a thick haze. Measurements of hazardous particles spiked to unprecedented levels — and so did complaints on the country’s social media. On Monday, the government’s principal propaganda organs essentially surrendered to public sentiment, breaking their silence and publishing a host of articles and editorials calling the pollution “choking, dirty and poisonous,” among other things. The state organs were only stating the obvious. According to readings by the U.S. Embassy, the air quality in central Beijing on Saturday, based on a measure of hazardous particulates, stood at 755 on a scale of 0 to 500. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a level above 300 is “hazardous;” according to the World Health Organization, a reading of 500 means the particulate level is 20 times that considered safe. By way of comparison, the level in Washington on Wednesday peaked at 39. Still, the relative openness of the official media was a change from past practice. Up until a year ago, the U.S. Embassy, which began reporting air pollution levels in 2008, was the only public source of such information — and Chinese authorities repeatedly demanded that the embassy stop releasing the numbers, most recently last June. The State Department’s creditable refusal to comply helped raise awareness of the pollution problem and eventually prompted authorities to begin releasing their own numbers. The Chinese government is not ignoring the pollution problem. Having spent billions in an attempt to clear the skies over Beijing before the 2008 Olympics, authorities are now spending billions more to replace the capital’s coal-fired power stations — a major source of the pollution — with cleaner gas-fired plants by 2015. They are also trying to push older cars and trucks off the city’s clogged streets. Nevertheless, the high readings recorded in recent days underline that the continuing push for rapid economic growth is creating problems — from pollution to growing inequality and massive official corruption — that are fueling discontent, especially among the country’s growing urban middle class. Last week, China’s microblogs pulsed with outrage over the censorship of a weekly newspaper that attempted to publish an editorial supporting adherence to the constitution. Now they are echoing with complaints over the pollution emergency and the policies that caused it. China’s outgoing cohort of leaders, led by Hu Jintao, responded to the discontent by trying to suppress it. But it’s becoming clear that that strategy will not work for their successors, under Xi Jinping. Mr. Xi’s regime will have to face the underlying problems or risk a crisis in Beijing much greater than any spike in air pollution. **Read more from Opinions:** The Post’s View: Chinese press for more civil liberties Jackson Diehl: Anxiety in China about the road ahead David Ignatius: China’s new hatchet man The Post’s View: China’s Communist inheritors — a ticket to wealth

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s claim that China and India have ‘no obligations’ until 2030 under the Paris Accord

During an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” the EPA administrator denounced the Paris Accord, the global agreement on curbing climate change, as a “bad deal for America” that “we need to exit in my opinion.” Asked his biggest objection to the accord, he claimed that China and India had no obligations until 2030, even though “they are polluting far more than we are.” Despite our queries, we did not get an explanation for Pruitt’s remarks from the EPA, but we have good news for him. If that’s his biggest problem, it’s solved! His objection is based on a misunderstanding of the agreement: China and India are already hard at work at meeting goals set for 2030. Pruitt appears to be stuck in a time warp. His concerns might have made more sense if he had been referring to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which did not require developing nations such as China and India to face legally binding requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That agreement was rejected by President George W. Bush.  The plans are not legally binding, but there is a distinction made between developing and developed countries in that developed countries are expected to reduce actual emissions, while developing countries would lower emissions based on units tied to measures such as gross domestic product or economic output. “Developed country Parties should continue taking the lead by undertaking economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets,” the text says. “Developing country Parties should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts, and are encouraged to move over time towards economy-wide emission reduction or limitation targets in the light of different national circumstances.” The distinction is made because developed countries, on a per capita basis, often produce more greenhouse gases than developing countries. Pruitt claimed that China and India and are polluting more than the United States, but that’s misleading.  So what did China and India pledge to do in their plans?       Pruitt clearly needs to brush up on the Paris Accord, as it’s false to claim that China and India have “no obligations” until 2030. China and India, just like the United States, have made commitments that are supposed to be fulfilled by 2030, meaning they have to take action now in order to meet those goals. The United States made more substantial commitments — which the Trump administration is abandoning — because the United States, on a per capita basis, is a much bigger polluter than either country. Pruitt earns Four Pinocchios.        Share the Facts 2017-04-14 11:34:21 UTC

Residents near U.S. ports say expansions taking heavy toll

The big trucks roar out of Port Newark like a beastly herd, snorting, grinding gears and belching exhaust as they rush through the predominantly black South Ward neighborhood. “In one hour, no matter when we count, we have about 400 trucks come through,” Kim Gaddy said. The diesel trucks help move $1 billion worth of cargo annually in and out of Port Newark, a cornerstone of the nation’s third-largest port system — the Port of New York and New Jersey — and the source of tens of thousands of jobs. But the pollution exacts a heavy toll on residents, environmental advocates say. And they fear it could get much worse. The widening of the century-old Panama Canal will allow a new generation of gigantic cargo ships to slip between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans within two years. Bigger ships mean more trucks hauling goods in and out of port communities — areas that studies have shown are disproportionately poor, have higher minority populations and a greater incidence of asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Gaddy and her three children, ages 8 to 24, have asthma, as do thousands of other adults and children in Newark, where the asthma-related death rate is nearly twice that of the suburbs. Environmentalists and residents say that particulate-matter pollution from trucks contributes to poor health in areas that have the fewest resources to fight it. Nationwide, African Americans and Latinos who live around ports are far more likely to breathe dirty air, according to a 2011 study by global research firm ICF International, published in the Journal of Public Health. “You hear about the killings in Newark, but the heart attacks we die of in higher numbers are never talked about,” said Gaddy, an organizer for the New Jersey Environmental Federation. “The pollution is killing us. We’re fighting for our lives.” In Newark’s Ironbound community near the port, Miguel Duran, 33, has asthma, as do his children. His 13-year-old son said he sees the shimmering fumes of idling trucks. He watched the trucks go by Hawkins Elementary School in Ironbound when he was a student there, playing on the recreation field, inhaler in his pocket. The $5.25 billion project to widen the canal — started in 2007 and expected to be finished in 2015 — has touched off a race among ports along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico eager to attract the world’s largest container ships and their enormous cargo. They are investing billions of dollars to deepen their harbors and expand their operations. Only a handful of the 360 ports in the United States can handle the biggest cargo ships, and only two, Baltimore and Norfolk, are in the east. Many of the super-ships carry cargo from Asia and use West Coast ports. Residents and environmentalists in the South Ward and Ironbound are fighting a proposal to make way for the big ships and increase truck traffic at Port Newark: raising the nearby Bayonne Bridge from 150 feet to 215 feet so towering stacks of cargo can pass beneath it. The bridge-raising plan is supported by Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D), who called the port system an economic engine that drives the region. Booker argues that pollution will probably decrease, because the new ships will be more fuel efficient and a program will help truck drivers buy more fuel-efficient rigs and get rid of older models. That same argument is echoed by other officials. A spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Christopher Valens, said raising the Bayonne Bridge will lead to only “a nominal change” in the number of trucks that load at the port every year. But the Environmental Protection Agency has its doubts. “We believe that changes in cargo movement associated with the project could result in some change in community impacts, particularly related to port traffic and air quality,” John Filippelli, director of the clean air and sustainability division for EPA’s Region 2, wrote in a March letter to the Coast Guard commander. Last week, the port authority entered into an agreement with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection that could pave the way to raising the bridge. The department said it would monitor the port to determine if there’s an increase in trucks and a decrease in air quality. But environmental advocates say the department should not have entered into an agreement without requiring an environmental impact study of air quality, and they said they are considering legal action to stop work on the bridge. Environmental justice advocates nationwide want officials to reduce the number of trucks at ports and want environmental impact studies conducted to help determine if more port activity increases pollution. The calls are especially strong in Los Angeles. A bid by the Los Angeles Harbor Commission to move forward with the Southern California International Gateway , a half-billion-dollar rail expansion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, drew a rebuke from Long Beach Mayor Robert Foster (D). After construction, truck trips are expected to increase from 500 to more than 8,000 daily, Foster said, but the commission insists that replacing older trucks will keep pollution from increasing. “I want them to create a health and community benefits fund to upgrade windows and filtration system so people can live in their homes,” Foster said in a recent interview. “These are my residents. Their health is not being treated fairly.” The Port of Baltimore ranks ninth among U.S. ports, with a value of more than $51 billion. It produces more than 40,000 jobs, according to a 2010 report prepared for the Maryland Port Administration. It generates about $300 million in taxes. The port administration is adding muscle to the Seagirt Marine Terminal to keep supplier firms from going to New Jersey or Norfolk, a large naval port that can handle bigger ships. Workers are dredging a canal to a 50-foot depth to handle ships nearly three times the size of vessels that currently use the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore’s work has moved forward for about two years without a challenge. But on the outskirts of Baltimore, Gloria Nelson, vice president of the Turner Station Conservation Team, said residents are concerned about where toxic dirt dredged at the Port of Baltimore will be dumped, as well as the contamination of the area’s soil with chromium, a carcinogen. “When projects come about, they seem to land on our side of the county,” Nelson said.

Chinese state media release a map showing the spread of ‘cancer villages’

An outlet with Chinese state media has taken the unusual step of indirectly acknowledging the link between cancer and pollution in China. In the process, it's also shown just how wide this problem is becoming. As David Wertime writes over at Tea Leaf Nation, the Weibo account of Global Times, a Communist Party-owned newspaper, recently shared a map of so-called "cancer villages," the colloquial term for towns where cancer rates have spiked in recent years.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "Global Times‘ recent sharing of this powerful image, accompanied by a weeping emoticon, perhaps signals that higher authorities have decided ... to open reportage of the existence of so-called 'cancer villages,' " Wertime writes. A message accompanying the map, translated by TLN, appears to say as much: While activists have pointed to the link between industrial pollution and increased cancer rates in the country since at least the early 2000s, Chinese officials have been reluctant to acknowledge the problem. A 2004 story in the state-run China Daily, headlined "Cancer village in spotlight," drew national attention to the cancer rates in the industrial southwest village of Yangqiao — but officials ordered newspapers to stop reporting the story.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The Post's Edward Cody, traveling to the region in 2004, detailed the "acrid odors from three chemical plants" and "the yellowish waste that flowed in their irrigation canals."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Even independent of pollution, China faces a growing cancer crisis. The World Health Organization expects cancer rates in China to grow by 78 percent by 2030, a product of growing affluence and changing lifestyles.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

India’s capital launches emergency plan to curb dire pollution

NEW DELHI — The Delhi government announced an emergency plan Friday to curb the capital’s pollution levels, among the worst in the world, by limiting drivers to alternate days beginning next month. From Jan. 1, residents of the city, which had been choking in thick smog in recent days, will be able to drive only every other day according to their license plate numbers — odd numbers on one day, even numbers on the other. They also plan to shut down Delhi’s large coal-fired power plant and make Euro VI emission norms mandatory for motor vehicles from 2017. Delhi’s chief minister said at a forum over the weekend that the alternate-day traffic schedule was an “emergency” measure and would be discontinued if a trial period proved it to be unworkable. Delhi’s police have already complained they don’t have the manpower to enforce it. “We don’t want to cause any inconvenience to the public,” Arvind Kejriwal said. The plan was announced after the state of Delhi’s high court issued a directive Thursday ordering the state and national governments as well as the Delhi Pollution Control Committee to devise a plan by Dec. 21 to address rising levels of air pollution. “It seems like we are living in a gas chamber,” said the court, which is based in the capital. New Delhi’s air — a noxious combination of exhaust, dust, smoke from wood and dung-fired stoves, burning leaves and industrial output — surpassed Beijing’s last year as the dirtiest in the world, according to a study by the World Health Organization. On Friday, its concentration of particulate matter — the airborne particles that enter people’s lungs and pose a major health threat — was a “hazardous” 652 at one point in the afternoon, compared with an “unhealthy” 180 in Mumbai and Hyderabad, two other major Indian cities. Officials say they hope the measure will reduce pollution levels by 50 percent. “This is being done for the interests of the citizens and the public,” Delhi state’s chief secretary, K.K. Sharma, said in a meeting with reporters. “We expect the public to cooperate.” The capital’s most recent effort to regulate polluters — a ban on diesel vehicles older than 10 years — descended into chaos this year, with traffic jams at checkpoints and city officials arguing that enforcing the policy was impossible. “We must move toward reforms, but we have to be practical,” said Harsh Vardhan, a physician who is India’s minister of science and technology. “Also, don’t say something you can’t implement.” The city’s smog is always bad in winter, but it has been unusually thick in recent days, exacerbated by fireworks set off for the festival of lights, Diwali, on Nov. 11. The air quality worsened sevenfold from the start of October to the end of November, according to a study by the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi, which showed that 3 percent of days in October and 73 percent in November had severe air quality. “Clearly there has been a huge increase,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, the center’s executive director for research and advocacy and head of its air pollution and clean transportation program. “These levels are several times higher than the standard. This has serious health impacts.” She said that the new pollution-control plan would be a catalyst for drivers to think of alternative ways to commute — by car pooling, limiting their trips or by traveling on foot or by bicycle. The capital’s last significant push for cleaner air began in the late 1990s, when the government closed small polluting factories and switched all buses and auto rickshaws from diesel to compressed natural gas. But the gains made after the switch began to decline about 2008 when the number of motor vehicles began to increase, Roychowdhury said. The rationing of road use has been practiced in large cities in Latin America and elsewhere for more than two decades. In Beijing, motorists cannot drive in the city center one day a week. London uses “congestion pricing” — a fee on driving in the city’s core that is about $17 a day on weekdays. But some environmental activists said implementation would be difficult in the sprawling Indian capital, with 16 million residents and 2 million registered motor vehicles. Although city officials said Friday that they would increase bus service and extend times for Metro service, they are still about 10,000 buses short of demand, according to Amit Bhatt, a sustainable-transportation expert in New Delhi. “It will be very challenging,” said Bhatt, the head of transportation at the EMBARQ program in the India branch of the World Resources Institute. When a system of alternate days was launched in Bogota, Colombia, Bhatt said, many residents simply bought cheap second cars, choosing vehicles with license plates to complement their primary vehicles so that they could drive every day. Bogota eventually switched the odd-even number system to peak hours only, which has been more successful, Bhatt said. Yet such moves do reduce the harmful particulate matter in the air, Bhatt said. To tap that benefit, his group has co-created voluntary car-free days in New Delhi and Gurgaon, a suburb. Gurgaon has voluntary car-free Tuesdays in four major corridors. On Tuesdays, particulate pollution drops sharply, Bhatt said. **Read more:** Indian city’s historic rainfall — nature’s fury or construction frenzy? Nepal border protests have led to a dangerous humanitarian crisis  Foreigners restrict movements in Bangladesh after ISIS-claimed killings Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the wo

Black carbon ranks as second-biggest human cause of global warming

Soot ranks as the second-largest human contributor to climate change, exerting twice as much of an impact as previously thought, according to an analysis released Tuesday. The four-year, 232-page study of black carbon, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, shows that short-lived pollution known as soot, such as emissions from diesel engines and wood-fired stoves, has about two-thirds the climate impact of carbon dioxide. The analysis has pushed methane, which comes from landfills and other forces, into third place as a human contributor to global warming. Black carbon, or soot, accelerates warming because the fine particles absorb heat when they are in the air and when they darken snow and ice. Although some lighter-colored fine particles can have a cooling effect because they block sunlight, other black carbon sources have a warming effect because they absorb it. They also accelerate glacier melting and can disrupt regional weather patterns. The findings came out on the same day that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that last year’s global average temperature ranked as the 10th-warmest on record, and NASA found it was the ninth-warmest. The two agencies analyze temperature data differently, but both found that with the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years since 1880 have all occurred since 2000. Piers Forster, one of the soot study’s authors and a professor at the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment, said in a statement that reducing black carbon can help address rising temperatures. “There are exciting opportunities to cool climate by reducing soot emissions but it is not straightforward,” Forster said, adding that cutting emissions from diesel engines and domestic wood and coal fires is “a no-   brainer” because it would improve public health and the climate. Fine particles cause heart and respiratory problems, leading to premature death, as well as asthma and other illnesses. These emissions cuts would produce an immediate cooling effect, the authors estimated, which would avoid a nearly 1-degree Fahrenheit temperature rise in the near term. “You save lives, and you produce really fast cooling,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego, identified black carbon in 2008 as the second-   biggest human contributor to climate change. But many researchers questioned his analysis because it was based on observations rather than computer modeling. “We seem to have put one major debate behind us, that black carbon is a significant contributor to the planet’s heat,” Ramanathan said in a phone interview. Although the United States has made major strides in curbing soot — Ramanathan and his colleagues recently found that black carbon concentrations in California have fallen by 50 percent in 25 years, largely because of stricter diesel emissions rules — Southeast Asia and China still suffer major pollution from diesel engines and wood- and coal-burning combustion. Just this week, Beijing experienced a string of hazardous air days, driven, in part, by soot emissions. The new study’s authors emphasized that in the long term, major cuts in carbon dioxide would be required to avert dangerous climate impacts. “Mitigating black carbon is good for curbing short-term climate change, but to really solve the long-term climate problem, carbon dioxide emissions must also be reduced,” said one of the paper’s lead authors, Tami Bond, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign atmospheric scientist. In describing last year’s temperature record, James E. Hansen, who directs NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, cautioned that just because 2012’s average was in keeping with recent years does not mean global warming has stalled. “On the decadal time scale, it’s going to get warmer, because we know the planet is out of energy balance,” Hansen told reporters. “This standstill, I think, is a temporary one.”

U.S. embassies are going to measure other countries’ air quality. Surprise: Some don’t like it much

In 2008, American diplomats in Beijing quietly installed an electronic monitor outside the U.S. Embassy to test pollution levels in the Chinese capital’s famously sooty air. The results, posted daily on the Internet, were mainly intended for U.S citizens and visitors, but soon ordinary Chinese were logging in for reliable information about health threats in the air they breathed. Chinese officials complained, but the daily reports from the embassy’s monitor added to the pressure that eventually led China to take dramatic steps to reduce smog. It worked so well, in fact, that the Obama administration has now decided on a major expansion — to U.S. diplomatic missions all around the world.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In a joint announcement on Wednesday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy unveiled plans to place air-quality monitors outside embassies in numerous foreign cities, starting with diplomatic posts in India and then moving to Vietnam, Mongolia and other countries.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Again, the goal ostensibly is to keep American ex-pats and travelers informed about health threats. But Kerry acknowledged other benefits to providing local populations with reliable information about air quality. “We’re not the only country in which this kind of awareness has led to action,” Kerry told reporters at a State Department news conference. The plan to install air monitors at embassies is an expansion of an EPA program called AirNow, which provides real-time data on smog and soot for U.S. cities through a Web site and a smartphone app. The new international program will focus on a single measurement of air quality — fine particulates, or microscopic particles that contribute to haze and trigger asthmatic attacks and other respiratory ailments. Bejing and other Asian cities frequently show unhealthy and even hazardous levels of particulates from diesel exhaust and smoke from coal-burning.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Chinese officials, who previously dismissed concerns over what they called excessive “fog” in the country’s largest cities, have been compelled by improved monitoring to taking dramatic steps to combat air pollution, which Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun recently described as a “life-or-death” situation. U.S. and Chinese officials announced a landmark agreement in November to lower air pollution in both countries to improve health and fight a major cause of climate change.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico McCarthy said she was “not the most popular person” when she visited Beijing several years ago after the embassy’s air monitor was first installed. But eventually official attitudes began to change as local residents were able to call up air-quality data from the embassy on their cellphones, she said. The embassy’s air monitor, located in the heart of the capital, typically showed unhealthier air quality compared to official Chinese data. “What happened was that they took action,” she said of the Chinese government. “They realized there were things they could do.”  She added that  U.S. officials intend to offer practical help as well as raw data as they expand access to information about air quality to cities around the world. U.S. environmental groups hailed the administration’s step, though some said the White House could be doing more to improve air quality at home. The EPA is considering tighter rules on smog-causing ozone in U.S. cities.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “Putting the spotlight on this can only lead to improvements,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a Washington-based environmental group. “It will be even better after EPA updates the smog standard and the related warning system.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Court allows Delhi’s drastic effort to clean air, but some question if it’s working

NEW DELHI — The High Court in India’s capital said Monday that it would not stop the city’s alternate-day driving trial, giving a boost to the 15-day program that officials hope will curb some of the worst urban air pollution in the world. The court had reviewed several public-interest petitions that had challenged the program, which, since Jan. 1, has limited drivers to odd or even days depending on their license plate number. Officials have said the odd-even plan has brought down pollution levels during peak hours and removed more than 1 million cars a day from the capital’s normally jammed roads. New Delhi, which is home to 6 million people and 8 million vehicles, has the worst air of any major city in the world, according to a 2014 World Health Organization study. The Delhi transport and rural development minister, Gopal Rai, praised the court’s decision, saying it would help the children of the city — who are increasingly suffering respiratory ailments — to breathe freely. Delhi residents have carpooled, crammed themselves into crowded buses and dusted off scooters they haven’t used for years in an effort to do their civic duty — and avoid a $30 fine. About 6,000 citations have been issued so far. During restricted travel times — 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., excluding Sundays — traffic flowed as freely as on a holiday, while buses and Metro trains were full at some points during rush hour. Commuters complained that the city’s auto-rickshaw and taxi drivers were price-gouging. “We have a terrible time commuting. It has become a nightmare,” said Delhi resident Suraj Sharma, 24, who was trying to get to her job at a school. “Metro is not convenient on my route. And you have to wait for buses, and these days they have become so crowded. Auto-rickshaws overcharge, and now you can’t even trust Uber, because most of the time they show surge prices.” Critics questioned whether the Delhi government’s plan is improving the city’s air, a foul-smelling haze of construction dust, vehicle exhaust, industrial output and smoke. Harish Salve, a lawyer for the Delhi government, said in court that data — backed by research by the Center for Science and Environment — showed that pollution diminished during peak hours during the trial’s first week. Yet many experts doubted that statement. The data journalism site IndiaSpend installed air-quality monitors throughout the city and found that air pollution levels rose 50 percent between the last week of December and the first week of January, although it noted that temperature, wind speed and increased moisture could account for the rise. At 7 a.m. Monday, the monitor at the U.S. Embassy registered an air-quality index of 318, a “very unhealthy” level, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which rates anything below 50 as “good.” Delhi’s off-the-charts air pollution prompted the embassy to add a new color to its ranking last week — black. That’s for air beyond a “hazardous” index of 500. The odd-even plan was announced in a chaotic rush in December, before most of the details had been worked out. The Delhi government later issued a lengthy list of people who would be exempt from the restrictions, including single women drivers and those with scooters. On the program’s first day, when volunteers handed out roses to first-time violators instead of tickets, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted hopeful lyrics from John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The government increased Metro service and added buses to its fleet of about 5,000, some of which were commandeered from local schools. Children have been kept out of school for the duration of the trial period. Air-quality experts said it would be weeks before the results could be fully analyzed.

Clearing the air in Maryland

I live in the Maryland countryside about 50 miles outside of Washington. It’s a beautiful region with rolling hills and farmland and dense forest rife with delicious green smells. I run in the early morning with my dog because the air is cooler and fresher. This is particularly important during the warmer months, as smog season in Maryland begins in June. Every year, the cool freshness of the spring air turns warm, heavy and laden with moisture, which becomes a problem when mixed with the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide released by coal-burning power plants. The few times I’ve run later in the day, even in the winter, I’ve noticed a distinct, acrid tang in the air and a tightened feeling in my lungs. That’s a taste of how it feels to be asthmatic. I don’t suffer from asthma, but I have friends who do, and I have seen them having an attack. Asthma is a nasty disease that makes you feel like you’re suffocating. It makes it impossible to do a host of things; it ruins the quality of your life; and it kills. In 2009, asthma was an underlying cause of death for 72 Maryland residents, while 149 others died with asthma as a contributing factor. More than a quarter of high school students in Baltimore have been diagnosed with asthma. Asthma is particularly common among Marylanders because our state has the worst air quality on the East Coast, says the Environmental Protection Agency. Only five of Maryland’s 13 coal-burning power plants have modern pollution- cutting technology for sulfur dioxide and smog-causing nitrogen oxide. And none of the five plants uses its technology to the maximum extent possible to reduce pollution. Why not? Smog and sulfur dioxide not only contribute to asthma, but they can also trigger heart attacks and lead to bronchitis and pneumonia, which also can kill. Everyone needs to breathe clean air. We must take action now.

Stop making our children sick: Beijing parents force government action over smog

Even in an authoritarian one-party state, the government listens to public opinion — especially when the middle class gets angry. And make no mistake, many middle-class Beijingers are mad. For much of the last three weeks, a thick pall of smog has settled over the capital — and much of China — in one of the most sustained periods of air pollution in the capital’s history. The government was supposed to be winning a war on air pollution, but this was proof that too little was really happening. And when children start falling sick, the ire rose. A campaign by angry, largely middle-class parents about the lack of an air filtration system in Beijing’s schools spread like wildfire across social media this week, especially on a messaging app called WeChat. In just over 24 hours, the city government reacted — by promising to equip Beijing’s schools with air cleaning systems. “Yesterday in our WeChat group, I saw parents discussing how many children were coughing and sick,” wrote a parent of a primary schoolchild in the petition. “Parents are very worried, and so am I.” Launched Wednesday, the petition asking the government to install an air filtration system in schools gathered nearly half a million views and more than 2,700 comments in around 24 hours. In another message viewed or shared tens of thousands of times, parents complained that closing schools in periods of heavy smog — as the government now mandates — is not a solution. In China’s National Museum, the air is filtered effectively and pollution eliminated, the message pointed out. “Antiques are important but they represent our past,” the message said. “Our children are more important, because they are the future of our country.” Beijing’s education authority announced late Thursday that air purifying systems would be installed in pilot kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, in a program subsidized by the municipal government. Echoing the words of the parents’ complaints, state media cited the municipal education authority as saying that children are the future of families and the nation, and that their health is of concern not only to their parents but also to the authorities. In December 2015, the Beijing government refused to budge after a similar campaign during another bout of heavy pollution — citing the lack of adequate electric circuitry in schools to install an air-scrubbing system, and the likelihood that open doors would render it ineffective anyway. But this week's announcement did not satisfy many people, especially those living outside the capital. “Beijing's children are flowers, other cities' children are grass,” one user commented. “Children from Hebei, are they not children of the Motherland?” asked another, citing the province surrounding Beijing which is home to much heavy industry and many of the world’s most smog-bound cities.  Others complained that installing air purifiers would not solve the underlying problem, while others suspected that the filters would probably be installed only in schools where officials send their children. One commentator said many top officials were sending their children abroad to study anyway. “Bring all government officials' children back to China,” he wrote. Lauri Myllyvirta, an air pollution specialist with Greenpeace East Asia, said the concentration of small PM2.5 particles in the air had stayed above a critical level — 200 micrograms per cubic meter — for eight days in a row, marking the first eight-day streak in at least 15 years. PM2.5 particles are particularly dangerous because they are small enough to enter the lungs and then the bloodstream. Middle-class anger was already simmering after the death in police custody of a 29-year-old urban professional, Lei Yang, and the authorities’ subsequent decision not to prosecute the police officers involved. On that occasion, the government backed the police and rode out the public backlash. This time around, it acted, and fast.

A burning mountain of trash in Mumbai fuels middle-class outcry

MUMBAI — The curtains in Vandana Trivedi’s 10th-floor apartment gently sway in the evening breeze as she sips tea after returning from work, her children playing around her. Beyond the sheer panels, however, is a jarring view — a mountain of trash the size of the Mall in Washington that has been burning for days. The Deonar garbage dump is Asia’s oldest and largest, and when it caught fire recently the smoke was visible from space, according to NASA images. Called “Mumbai’s silent killer” or “toxic time bomb,” the dump in recent months has given birth to a new environmental awakening among the middle-class residents in the area. They are fighting a David-vs.-Goliath-style battle online and offline to make the government shut down the dump and take the garbage out of the city. The actions take place as rising middle-class concerns about pollution and public health have fueled a new kind of civic activism in recent years in many Indian cities. “The stench remains in our clothes, curtains and the upholstery,” said Trivedi, 38, an asset-management professional. She had not sent her 6-year-old daughter to school for a week because of the noxious smoke, so the girl was skating in the living room, snaking between the sofa and the table. “How do I protect my children from the very air that they breathe?” she asked. “I feel so helpless as a mother.” The Deonar garbage dump, which has been around since 1927, has grown into a 300-acre open sore of putrefying trash. More than half of Mumbai’s 10,000 tons of unsegregated and untreated garbage is dumped there every day. It is an emblem of the poor management of Indian cities, which can lack even the most basic services. More than 350 million Indians live in cities today — and that will probably rise to 650 million by 2030 — but only 23 percent of urban solid waste is processed. This year, the trash dump caught fire several times, worsening the city’s air quality to “poor” and “very poor” in March. In January, the thick, poisonous smoke blinded residents and left them coughing for days. Schools and malls were shut down. Last month, two of the firefighters working round-the-clock to douse the blaze were taken to the hospital after they fell sick. Officials say the fire was set off by methane gas in the trash or started by individuals wanting to recover plastics and metal. Rajesh Valappil, 42, who heads a tech start-up and lives near the trash pile, said neighbors who had previously been apathetic about it have been moved to action by the string of fires. He said he worries about dioxins being released into the air from the burning plastic. The residents — most of them urban professionals who want to jog or walk outside — have dubbed themselves “the weekend warriors.” They have conducted marches and protest sit-ins, tweeted to public officials, flooded inboxes and procured thousands of signatures in online petitions. They regularly monitor an air-quality-index app on their smartphones, conduct strategy meetings in WhatsApp groups and upload videos of the smoke on their Facebook pages with posts that begin with phrases such as, “Another day, another fire.” In a large slum that hugs the dump, children playing cricket run in and out of the area to fetch the ball. Rotting trash overflows the dump, floating in open drains and collecting in small heaps outside homes. Infants cough all day, while billboards hanging overhead demand that the dump be shut down. And yet, said Syed Shah, 46, a trash picker whose family of seven lives less than 20 feet from the noxious mountain, “this garbage dump is our daily bread.” He said he feeds his family by selling the plastic and metal scrap and coconut shells that he pulls from the dump each day. “The whole city is up in arms against this dump. But where do we go? They cannot close it abruptly and kick our stomachs.” The politics over the dump has shone a light on the city’s underlying class divide. “For saving the livelihood of a few thousand trash pickers, should the health of the entire city be compromised?” asked Akbar Hussain, a local political worker who heads a public union for transport drivers. Clinics in the neighborhood are swarming with patients who suffer from respiratory illnesses, diarrhea and jaundice. A doctor said that since the fires started, many of his asthmatic patients have stopped responding to their regular medicines. “The frequent fires will cause an epidemic of infectious diseases in Mumbai. It is no longer about the people who live near the dump,” said Sanjay Nirupam, a senior leader of the opposition Congress party who has protested the dump. Residents say the city has not issued a single health advisory, despite the toxic air quality. The government has identified a rural site outside Mumbai for a new dump. But officials say nothing can change overnight. “Even if we start working on a war footing today, it will take at least a year and a half to stop the dumping here in Deonar,” said Shailesh Phanse, the chairman of the standing committee in the city municipal corporation. “We have to prepare the new site — we cannot repeat the mistake of just dumping the garbage there.” Authorities have installed 12 surveillance cameras and increased police security at the dump site in hopes of determining whether the fires are self-igniting, from environmental factors or being deliberately set. Officials are also considering making mandatory the segregation of trash by residents, a difficult move as recycling remains rare in India. And even if residents sort their trash, the city municipal corporation does not have enough trucks to collect segregated garbage or processing plants to treat it, according to Raj Kumar Sharma, an environmental activist. Instead, the resident-activists have faced criticism, accused of tarnishing Mumbai’s image globally and spreading panic on social media. Recently, as the fourth fire raged on, Valappil, who heads the tech start-up, fought online. “I updated the Wikipedia page on Deonar. Then I emailed NASA and requested them to release a new image. That is how desperate we are here,” he said. On the same day, not too far away, a 7-month-old infant named Hasnain Khan began coughing nonstop. The deadly smoke had been swirling all day in his neighborhood on the edge of the dump. His father rushed him inside and closed the windows tight. It didn’t help. That night, he died in his sleep. “No parent should go through the trauma of burying their infant son again,” said Sarfaraz Khan, his 36-year-old father. “The garbage dump must go, whatever it takes.” **CORRECTION:** _An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the number people living in Indian cities will probably rise from 350 million today to 650 million by 2020. It should have said by 2030. This version has been corrected._ **Read more:** Driving restrictions in Delhi may spark awakening about air pollution Indian officials want 100 ‘smart cities.’ Residents just want water and power. India’s huge need for electricity is a problem for the planet

Air pollution on Wall Street might actually be bringing down the stock market

Examining the daily returns of the S&P 500 index from January 2000 through November 2014, the researchers showed that on days with bad air quality in lower Manhattan within a mile of the exchange, stock returns tended to be lower. “A one standard deviation increase in PM2.5 decreases the daily percentage returns by 11.9%, a substantial effect on daily NYSE returns,” the study reports. Or to put it less technically: “In New York, if you take a day from the cleanest 20 percent of days, and make it one of the dirtiest 20 percent of days, other things being equal, the effect of that on the stock returns, it depresses them by 11 or 12 percent,” explained Anthony Heyes, a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa and the study’s lead author. “Which is a fairly significant number.” Heyes conducted the study with his University of Ottawa colleague Soodeh Saberian and Matthew Neidell of Columbia University. The study does not take a strong stand on how this happens. But the researchers think that being subtly irritated by air pollution, and not feeling well, contributes to being more risk averse in one’s behavior. This, in turn, would then lessen investors’ performance. Exploring this idea, the study shows that air pollution levels in lower Manhattan also had a relationship to the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Volatility Index, or VIX, which is a widely accepted indicator of investor fear or worry. The VIX tended to increase when pollution was worse, the study found, such that “a one unit increase in PM2.5 concentration increases the value of VIX by 1.9%.” “We would say, the movements in VIX that we see are consistent with reduced risk appetite,” said Heyes, noting that the researchers are only suggesting this mechanism, rather than having definitively proved it. The researchers also performed statistical techniques to control for other extraneous factors like weather, levels of traffic, and the presence of other pollutants than PM2.5 in deriving their findings.  “This paper makes a solid contribution to this literature by showing that pollution is an important factor in determining investor sentiment,” Chang said. Chang also seemed to find the idea about an effect on risk aversion plausible, noting in an email that “when you are feeling sick, you have a lower tolerance for risky investments so you move your money from riskier to safer assets (e.g., stocks to bonds).” He added, though, that “whether increasing risk aversion is a good or bad thing depends on whether risk aversion was too low, too high, or just right before the change.  That is looking back we can probably say that we would be better off if people were a little more risk averse about the housing market a few years ago.” One surprising thing about the new paper is that it finds that local air pollution in New York appears to have affected the entire S&P, whose component stocks are obviously traded by individuals far beyond the city. But Heyes suggests that top traders are so concentrated in Manhattan that they can still have an impact, and notes that the study performed tests to make sure that the effect was definitely local in nature. “The effect that we find is very definitely a Manhattan effect, that’s just a statement of empirical reality,” he said. In the end, it’s another telling finding for the field of behavioral economics, which tends to show that we are far from purely rational economic actors, notes Heyes. “The investors, the actors in the finance sector are actually human beings, they have emotions, they have moods, they have limitations in terms of their cognition and how they behave,” he said.

Cool homes, hot planet: How air conditioning explains the world

To get through the 21st century in some semblance of a stable state, humanity needs to slash its greenhouse gas emissions. In every part of the world, countries will have to shift their energy sources and cut back on carbon. And more and more, they openly acknowledge as much. But what, in coming decades, if some major energy trend emerges that cuts in the opposite direction — pushing emissions upward? In a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, two researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and the National Bureau of Economic Research may have found one.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “People are getting richer all around the world, and they’re buying air conditioners,” explains lead study author Lucas Davis of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s pretty startling, actually.” [ _ **The problem with Earth Day? Human psychology**_ ]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Air conditioners in the United States are commonplace — they’re in some 90 percent of our homes, where they consume 5 percent of total U.S. electricity. But we’re not where the growth will happen. Rather, it’s in warm or tropical countries with large populations, like India and Brazil. And you can’t really blame them: As incomes rise, people everywhere seek more comfort — and more and more, they’ll be able to afford it.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico China, for instance, has seen a doubling of air conditioner sales in just a half decade — 64 million of them were sold in the year 2013, according to the study. Demand will also be huge in India, the paper finds, where there are “more than three times as many cooling degree days per person” than in the United States. (A “cooling degree day” is a measurement used to determine the demand for air conditioning by calculating how many degrees the average temperature is over 65 —and thus how much cooling you’d need to maintain your home at 65.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The study looked in particular at Mexico, where air conditioning penetration is currently only at about 13 percent. It found that as people get richer, those living in warm areas will flock to air conditioning. “In warm areas … we find a close relationship between household income and air conditioner adoption, with ownership increasing 2.7 percentage points per $1,000 of annual household income,” write Davis and his colleague Paul Gertler, also based at U.C. Berkeley. For Mexico, if incomes increase 2 percent each year, this leads to a projection of between 71 and 81 percent of households having air conditioning by the end of the century, versus just 13 percent today. This means that residential energy use overall would increase between 64 and 83 percent — and carbon dioxide emissions would increase, annually, by 23 to nearly 30 million tons. In 2012, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Mexico’s total emissions were 453 million metric tons — so this is fully 6 percent of that overall number.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico [ _ **The surprising reason why Arctic warming could be worse than previously thought**_ ]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It is important to note that this future trend is not forecast to occur because the world will be warmer — though it will be — but rather, because it will be richer. “The income increases alone explain the lion’s share of the predicted increases in air conditioning saturation,” Davis says. “It’s mainly that people are growing richer. And we think this pattern will hold not only in Mexico but in low and middle income countries around the world. The potential is just enormous.” In fact, the study notes, there are many countries with much greater potential to increase overall air conditioning levels than Mexico — either because of larger populations, or larger numbers of cooling degree days each year. The paper provides a list of 12 based on “air conditioning potential,” including India, China, Indonesia and Brazil. “Most of the countries on the list are within the income range where in Mexico we begin to observe a rapid increase in air conditioning adoption,” notes the paper. Thus, the growth of air conditioning nestles into a much broader global trend — the rise of highly populous developing countries, their huge economic growth and the many knock-on effects from that growth, environmental and otherwise. On the environmental front, unless the electricity to power all of these new air conditioners somehow manages to come strictly from renewable sources — and it seems pretty unlikely that this will be the case — there could clearly be a substantial added contribution to the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (although the study does not quantify that contribution). So the good news is that the world will be a lot more comfortable in the future. And with global warming, we’ll need it. But the bad news is that with millions upon millions of air conditioners, there will be a huge growth in electricity use to keep them humming.

Good day to play outside? Learn about air pollution to find out.

Have you ever run around outside on a hot summer day, and suddenly your lungs feel as though they’re burning? You could be overly tired. Or your lungs may be reacting to pollutants and chemicals in the air. Understanding air pollution can help you avoid it and think about ways you can make the air cleaner. Air pollution often refers to two things: ozone and fine particulate matter, both of which are harmful to humans. Fine particulate matter, or tiny pieces of dustlike substance, is mostly produced from burning fossil fuels, for instance, gasoline in cars and coal in power plants. Fine particulate matter is much smaller than the kind of dust that you find after you haven’t cleaned your room in a while. The small size is what makes this matter problematic to our health, because it can settle deep in our lungs, making it hard to breathe. Ozone happens because of a chemical reaction. Sunlight chemically reacts with gases produced from the burning of fossil fuels to form ground-level ozone. When ozone is high in the atmosphere, it helps protect life on the ground from harmful radiation from the sun. This radiation causes problems such as skin cancer. Ozone becomes a problem when it’s close to Earth. When ozone gets into our lungs, it becomes harmful to our health. Kids are at higher risk of the damaging effects of ozone and particulate matter, especially kids with asthma, because their bodies and lungs are developing. “Children tend to have a higher respiratory rate [inhaling and exhaling more rapidly than adults],” said Janet Phoenix of Clean Air Partners, an organization that educates people about air pollution in the Washington area. “So they’re more exposed to any chemical particles that might be in the air.” Some of the worst air-quality days are actually the most beautiful days. On hot, sunny days without wind, the air doesn’t move around and pollutants build up. “Poor air circulation, heat and light kind of help to bake the chemicals into the air,” Phoenix said. Rain helps wash the bad things out of the air, so the worst time to be outside is when it hasn’t rained in a while. “It’s like if you don’t take a shower for a few days, you know what happens,” said Ross Salawitch, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic studies at the University of Maryland. “The rain is cleansing like a shower is cleansing.” In order to help you know when it’s safe to be outside, days are assigned color codes that correspond to numbers, which represent how much of these nasty substances is in the air. When the amount of ozone and particulate matter reaches unsafe levels, the day will be labeled as code orange, code red and on the worst days, code purple. “When we have air-quality alerts that are either red or purple, even orange, those are the days to stay inside and play video games,” Salawitch said. According to Phoenix, the worst time of day for air quality is when people are going back and forth from school and work. “If you can wait until later in the day to do some of these [outdoor] physical activities, especially when in the red or orange zone, then you’re better off,” she said. The good news? Because of stricter pollution regulations, Washington’s air quality is improving, according to Salawitch. There hasn’t been a code red day in the region in the past three summers. The last code purple was in 2006. But even short exposure to poor air quality can have negative effects on your body. That’s why area residents should limit activities that increase air pollution, Phoenix said. Try encouraging your family to walk to the pool or the library. When school starts, take the bus instead of having your parents drive you. Keeping your family’s cars off the road means less air pollution — and not just for your neighborhood. “What you do in one part of D.C. will affect your neighbors,” said Phoenix, adding that area residents are becoming more aware. “I think people are really making an effort, and that’s wonderful.”

NEW DELHI — The Delhi government announced an emergency plan Friday to curb the capital’s pollution levels, among the worst in the world, by limiting drivers to alternate days beginning next month. From Jan. 1, residents of the city, which had been choking in thick smog in recent days, will be able to drive only every other day according to their license plate numbers — odd numbers on one day, even numbers on the other. They also plan to shut down Delhi’s large coal-fired power plant and make Euro VI emission norms mandatory for motor vehicles from 2017. Delhi’s chief minister said at a forum over the weekend that the alternate-day traffic schedule was an “emergency” measure and would be discontinued if a trial period proved it to be unworkable. Delhi’s police have already complained they don’t have the manpower to enforce it. “We don’t want to cause any inconvenience to the public,” Arvind Kejriwal said. The plan was announced after the state of Delhi’s high court issued a directive Thursday ordering the state and national governments as well as the Delhi Pollution Control Committee to devise a plan by Dec. 21 to address rising levels of air pollution. “It seems like we are living in a gas chamber,” said the court, which is based in the capital city. New Delhi’s air — a noxious combination of exhaust, dust, smoke from wood and dung-fired stoves, burning leaves and industrial output — surpassed Beijing’s last year as the dirtiest in the world, according to a study by the World Health Organization. On Friday, its concentration of particulate matter — the airborne particles that enter people’s lungs and pose a major health threat — was a “hazardous” 652 at one point in the afternoon, compared with an “unhealthy” 180 in Mumbai and Hyderabad, two other major Indian cities. Officials say they hope the measure will reduce pollution levels by 50 percent. They also plan to shut down Delhi’s large coal-fired power plant and make Euro VI emission norms mandatory for motor vehicles from 2017. “This is being done for the interests of the citizens and the public,” Delhi state’s chief secretary, K.K. Sharma, said in a meeting with reporters. “We expect the public to cooperate.” The capital’s most recent effort to regulate polluters — a ban on diesel vehicles older than 10 years — descended into chaos this year, with traffic jams at checkpoints and city officials arguing that enforcing the policy was impossible. “We must move toward reforms, but we have to be practical,” said Harsh Vardhan, a physician who is India’s minister of science and technology. “Also, don’t say something you can’t implement.” The city’s smog is always bad in winter, but it has been unusually thick in recent days, exacerbated by fireworks set off for the festival of lights, Diwali, on Nov. 11. The air quality worsened sevenfold from the start of October to the end of November, according to a study by the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi, which showed that 3 percent of days in October and 73 percent in November had severe air quality. “Clearly there has been a huge increase,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, the center’s executive director for research and advocacy and head of its air pollution and clean transportation program. “These levels are several times higher than the standard. This has serious health impacts.” She said that the new pollution-control plan would be a catalyst for drivers to think of alternative ways to commute — by car pooling, limiting their trips or by traveling on foot or by bicycle. The capital’s last significant push for cleaner air began in the late 1990s, when the government closed small polluting factories and switched all buses and auto rickshaws from diesel to compressed natural gas. But the gains made after the switch began to decline about 2008 when the number of motor vehicles began to increase, Roychowdhury said. The rationing of road use has been practiced in large cities in Latin America and elsewhere for more than two decades. In Beijing, motorists cannot drive in the city center one day a week. London uses “congestion pricing” — a fee on driving in the city’s core that is about $17 a day on weekdays. But some environmental activists said implementation would be difficult in the sprawling India capital, with 16 million residents and 2 million registered motor vehicles. Although city officials said Friday that they would increase bus service and extend times for Metro service, they are still about 10,000 buses short of demand, according to Amit Bhatt, a sustainable-transportation expert in New Delhi. “It will be very challenging,” said Bhatt, the head of transportation at the EMBARQ program in the India branch of the World Resources Institute. When a system of alternate days was launched in Bogota, Colombia, Bhatt said, many residents simply bought cheap second cars, choosing vehicles with license plates to complement their primary vehicles so that they could drive every day. Bogota eventually switched the odd-even number system to peak hours only, which has been more successful, Bhatt said. Yet such moves do reduce the harmful particulate matter in the air, Bhatt said. To tap that benefit, his group has co-created voluntary car-free days in New Delhi and Gurgaon, a suburb. Gurgaon has voluntary car-free Tuesdays in four major corridors. On Tuesdays, particulate pollution drops sharply, Bhatt said. **Read more:** Indian city’s historic rainfall — nature’s fury or construction frenzy? Nepal border protests have led to a dangerous humanitarian crisis  Foreigners restrict movements in Bangladesh after ISIS-claimed killings Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

China installed record amounts of solar power in 2013. But coal is still winning.

There have been quite a few headlines lately about the record amounts of solar power getting built in China. In 2013, the country added at least 12 gigawatts of solar capacity — 50 percent more than any country has _ever_ __ built in a single year. Impressive.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But let's also put this in context. China is a massive country and is building lots of everything. And last year it added far more fossil-fuel output capability than it did solar, wind, hydro and nuclear power combined. The chart below comes from Armond Cohen of the Clean Air Task Force:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **New Electric Production Capability Added in China During 2013 (Terawatt Hours)**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Now, a few caveats: Many of those newly built coal and gas plants were replacing older, less-efficient plants that are getting shuttered. The solar numbers are also likely a bit low, since we're still awaiting final data. And this is only an estimate of generation _capability_ , not how much electricity each source will actually generate in practice. Still, the basic picture is clear enough: Clean energy is making dramatic strides in China, but fossil fuels continued to dominate in 2013.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University What about the future? Seeing as how China is now the world's largest emitter of carbon-dioxide emissions, the country's energy use matters a whole lot in discussions about climate change — especially its coal-burning habits. And, right now, there are two views on how those habits will evolve. **The optimistic green view:** Some analysts say that China can't keep burning dirty coal forever. Air pollution is choking its cities and taking years off people's lifespans. Meanwhile, clean energy sources like solar, wind, nuclear and hydroelectric dams are making impressive gains. The country is also growing more slowly, getting more efficient and shifting away from heavy industry.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Citigroup analysts, for example, recently argued that China's coal use could well peak by 2015, far earlier than most other forecasts assume:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **The "coal is here to stay" view:** But not everyone agrees that coal's days in China are numbered. Even if China does __ slow down its pace of coal-plant construction, those power plants are going to stick around for many decades, continuing to pump carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere. (The majority of China's plants have been built since 2000, and they can operate for 30 to 50 years.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Armond Cohen ran some numbers. He's not convinced by Citigroup's forecasts on Chinese fracking and nuclear construction. But set that aside. Even in Citigroup's most aggressive low-coal forecasts, coal would still provide 60 percent of China's power in 2020 — seven times as much as wind and solar combined.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University As such, Cohen argues that a "peak coal" in China is far less likely than a "long, high plateau" for coal. That's why, he notes, tackling climate change will require "directly address[ing] the multi-decade carbon emissions from China’s coal fleet as it exists today and as it will exist in 2020 and 2030." And that would seem to require some sort of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology for coal plants. (See here for more on that.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The energy analysts at BP seem to agree with the "plateau" view: In their latest Energy Outlook, they predicted that China won't keep building plants at the same frenetic pace it did in the 2000s. The rate of growth will slow significantly. But China's overall coal consumption will stay high for the next two decades, making up half of the world's coal use, and then decline only mildly after 2030:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Global coal consumption, by region**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University And here's the global forecast: **Global energy consumption, by fuel:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University As a result, BP predicts that global greenhouse-gas emissions will continue to increase for the next two decades — at a time when climate-policy experts think emissions need to start declining if we want a shot at avoiding 2°C or more of global warming.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University China's frenzy of solar and wind construction is definitely worth watching. But keep those broader trends in mind when you see those renewable records getting smashed. **Further reading:**Is China the last hope for carbon capture technology?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Rural Americans are more likely to die from the top 5 causes of death

Those five top causes of death — heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, chronic lower respiratory disease and stroke — accounted for 1.6 million deaths, or about 62 percent of all deaths in the United States in 2014. Among rural Americans, more than 70,000 of the deaths were potentially preventable, the study found, including 25,000 from heart disease and 19,000 from cancer. About 15 percent of the U.S. population lives in rural areas. These 46 million people tend to be older, poorer and sicker than urban Americans, with higher rates of cigarette smoking, high blood pressure and obesity and with lower rates of physical activity. They also don't use seat belts as often. They typically have less access to health care and are less likely to have health insurance. Previous CDC research has identified that a substantial proportion of deaths in each of the five categories could have been avoided. But the data from the latest report showing more premature deaths in rural areas represent a new finding. “There is a striking gap in health between rural and urban Americans,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden. Rural America is where Americans are most in need of health care services yet often have the fewest options available, noted Alan Morgan, chief executive of the National Rural Health Association. "When the federal government tries to address health disparities, it usually focuses on large population areas where they can get the most bang for the federal dollar," Morgan said. "And that leaves vast areas of America without a federal or state partnership on ensuring access to care."  Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States. Although smoking rates have declined overall in the past several years, tobacco use raises the risk for developing and dying from heart disease, stroke and chronic lower respiratory disease. Smoking prevalence among adults is higher in rural areas and differs markedly by region. Unintentional injuries, which include overdoses from drugs, alcohol and other chemicals, as well as from motor vehicle crashes and other accidents, were about 50 percent higher in rural areas. That was in part because of greater risk of death from crashes and opioid overdoses. Rates of opioid misuse and overdose death are among the highest among rural populations. Access to treatment is often delayed because emergency medical services take longer to reach injured or poisoned patients in rural areas. Rural areas also have fewer trauma centers with advanced equipment and specialized staff available at any hour. Rural parts of the southeastern and southwestern public-health regions have the highest number of potentially preventable deaths. The southeastern states are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The southwestern states are Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

Fred Hiatt: India awakens to its grass-roots power

NEW DELHI It’s common these days for people to compare India with China and conclude that maybe democracy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In India, they note, power shortages force factories to rely on generators, and investors may spend years trying to gain title to land for construction. In China, by contrast, power plants, factories and entire mega-cities seem to sprout overnight. Sleek trains streak across China’s countryside while Indians cram themselves into — or cling to the tops of — wheezing old buses. These are caricatures, of course: Most Chinese cannot afford to ride on their high-speed rail; New Delhi’s Metro is modern and efficient. But when I asked about the comparison, a senior Indian official did not dispute the advantages of a one-party state in propelling infrastructure projects forward. Instead, he told me, India has advantages of its own. You can see the possibility of one such advantage emerging from the extraordinary month of ferment, protests and soul-searching that has followed a horrific gang rape here Dec. 16. The details of that crime have been told and retold: A 23-year-old woman and her boyfriend boarded what they thought was a public bus, only to be brutally beaten and, in the woman’s case, repeatedly raped and then left bleeding on the road. She died days later. It is more than the random brutality that captured Indians’ attention. The victim’s story spoke to “the aspirations of new, young India,” the feminist author and publisher Urvashi Butalia told me, “not of the already rich but of those who can just begin to see the opportunities that may be offered by a changing country.” The victim was from a poor farming family but was training as a physical therapist. She was lower-caste but dating a Brahmin. They had just seen “The Life of Pi” in one of the capital’s new malls — public spaces that allow young men and women to socialize as never before. “New, young India” reacted to her barbarous end with an outraged determination that stunned those in power. Facebook- and text-message-fueled demonstrations at first demanded vengeance against the rapists; evolved into demands for better policing, better-lighted streets and swifter justice; and then moved into broader conversations about prejudice against females in schools, bureaucracies, offices — and inside families. India’s lively media jumped on board and have not let up. In one investigation, a CNN-IBN television crew challenged a father who had disowned his daughter after her rape. “She should have protected her honor,” he said. “Was it her fault?” the (female) reporter pressed. A Sunday talk show took up workplace harassment (“Have you slept with your boss?” it asked in an instant poll, to which 3 percent said yes) and suggestive dancing in Bollywood movies (“Is it time for cinema to introspect on how it portrays women?” Eighty-six percent said yes.). Newspapers invited women to tell their stories, anonymously if they chose, and reported old crimes that had received no attention when they occurred. Unimaginable ugliness and despair have been exposed in an unrelenting torrent: rapes inside homes, kept secret; rapes that police refuse to investigate; rapes by police of rape victims seeking justice. Some Indians bridle at the picture being presented to the world. But the world has seen something else as well: thousands of Indians taking action, not as members of a particular party, caste or religion but as individuals joining to demand more responsiveness from their government and to talk about changing their culture, attitudes and schools. The protests build on a similar grass-roots uprising against corruption last year. This time, protests of solidarity have taken place in Bangladesh and Pakistan and as far away as Egypt. In China, state-controlled media “have really been going to town on this,” Butalia told me. Though she has worked for decades to raise awareness about violence against women in India, she found herself bridling at Chinese reporters’ loaded questions, “as if you can’t even walk out of the house” in India. “China does not release reliable statistics about rape,” she noted. There’s another difference, too. In India (as in post-Newtown America), advocates worry whether they can sustain the outrage long enough to bring about reform. In China, a national online conversation would last only as long as the Communist Party deemed useful. Both China and India have grown astoundingly over the past 20 years, hoisting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. For each, success has opened huge new opportunities and huge new challenges, with different political systems representing only one variable. For India, one such opportunity may be the political space that allows people the chance to change things for the better, and their emerging suspicion that they just might have the strength to do so. **_fredhiatt@washpost.com _ ** ****

In New Delhi, celebrated rail transit system sees rise in suicides

NEW DELHI — With its air-conditioned trains, clean platforms, clockwork timing, orderly lines and women-only carriages, New Delhi’s Metro has been celebrated for a decade as a symbol of a rapidly modernizing nation. But the gleaming public transportation system has now become a suicide hot spot. Twelve people have killed themselves at Metro stations here this year, a trend that is threatening to mar the image of the capital city’s new lifeline. Most of the dead were younger than 30. There were a total of 10 suicides at the Metro in the nine previous years. In a country of 1.2 billion people where 180,000 killed themselves in 2010, according to the World Health Organization’s most recent estimates, the Metro figures may not count for much. But newspaper coverage of every case, under headlines screaming “Metro suicides,” has sharpened a debate about the growing suicide rate nationwide. It has also prompted the Delhi Metro, which carries 2 million passengers daily, to devise a suicide-prevention plan. “Metro lines around the world have confronted this problem, but what is really worrying for us here is that many of the suicides are by young people,” said Anuj Dayal, a spokesman for the Delhi Metro Rail Corp. In the past few months, young men and women have died by throwing themselves in front of trains or jumping from elevated Metro stations, officials said. Many others have made unsuccessful attempts. Experts say the Metro deaths are a surprising development in a country where the national debate on suicide has traditionally focused on rural incidents, especially the large numbers of struggling farmers who kill themselves by consuming pesticides. A 2012 Lancet study of suicides in India said rural rates were twice as high as urban ones. Suicide rates in India have risen by 67 percent since the 1980s, according to one of the authors of the Lancet study. Increasing urban anxieties surrounding education, jobs and changing lifestyles are driving more young Indians into deep depression, analysts say. “Rapid social changes are creating more helplessness and despair,” said Vikram Patel, a professor of international mental health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and co-author of the Lancet journal essay. “With education, young people’s aspirations are growing, and they are surrounded by the narrative of booming India, but somehow the real India they encounter is not as promising as they are led to believe.” The reasons young people kill themselves include parental disapproval of romance and worries about college grades and jobs, officials say. About 70 percent of suicides are among Indians younger than 44. India is one of the few countries that still regard the attempt to commit suicide as a punishable offense. Bowing to pressure from mental-health caregivers, the government is considering amending the law to decriminalize it. A proposed law on mental-health care also seeks to humanize India’s approach to suicides. “What we are saying in the proposed law is that if somebody attempts suicide, it must be assumed the person needs immediate medical attention and should be shown to the doctor at the earliest, even before the police question him,” said Keshav Desiraju, a senior Health Ministry official. But Desiraju says there is an alarming shortage of trained psychiatrists in public hospitals. There is no nationwide toll-free suicide help line. “The government programs do not focus on suicide prevention because it falls through the cracks, between social, legal and health stigmas,” said Lakshmi Vijaykumar, who founded a help line called Sneha in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and is a consultant to the World Health Organization’s suicide-prevention program. Meanwhile, Delhi Metro officials say they are hoping their passengers will be their eyes and ears. “We are going to start raising awareness and give the passengers tips on how to observe and deter people who may exhibit suicidal tendencies,” Dayal said. “If a person is crying or behaving in suspicious fashion, then we tell other passengers to report it. If a passenger skips boarding two consecutive trains, the person will be questioned. We are also watching all this on surveillance cameras.” Authorities also are raising the level of walls and railings at several Metro stations. “We cannot afford to build sliding screen doors at each station to act as barriers like in Singapore and Bangkok,” Dayal said.

How planting trees in cities can save thousands of lives

The researchers note that the biggest effects of tree-planting are likely to be seen in cities with high population densities and high levels of pollution or heat. The study suggests that Karachi, Pakistan, is likely to see the greatest returns on investment in terms of pollution reductions, and Dhaka, Bangladesh, is the city likely to benefit the most from temperature reductions.   Where trees are planted, what species are chosen and how they are arranged also makes a difference in the benefits they confer. In terms of trees’ effect on air pollution, for instance, this paper relies on an average impact drawn from several previous research papers. In general, though, the body of literature suggests that trees can have a range of effects on air pollution, Donovan noted, and that any benefits will be highest when trees are planted in densely populated and highly polluted areas.   Donovan also added that some trees give off volatile organic compounds, which can interact with other chemicals in the air to produce harmful ozone. Additionally, clusters of trees tend to catch particulate matter on their leaves and bark — and while that does remove the pollutants from the out-flowing air, the effect can also trap higher levels of pollution in small areas. In other words, trees do confer broad benefits when it comes to pollution, but there are still complex factors to consider in terms of the types of trees planted and their locations and configurations. On the other hand, there’s also a large body of research supporting the temperature and carbon-saving benefits of urban trees described in the paper. And when the full range of health benefits are considered, there’s a definite case for investing in more urban tree-planting, Donovan said.

Want to move abroad? This map shows the best and worst countries to be an expatriate.

China and Thailand are the two best countries to be an expatriate, according to a recent study by British bank HSBC that looked at economic opportunities and quality of life for expats in 34 countries. They're followed by small, rich countries known for their globalized business classes. In descending order, they are: Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Bahrain and Singapore.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The worst of these 34 countries to be an expat is Egypt, which has seen xenophobia rise considerably since this summer's military coup and wave of populist nationalism. Also at the bottom of the list is much of Western Europe, which the report says is often too expensive for expats. In descending order: France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy and second-to-last is Ireland. For 24 of those countries, the study also looked at metrics gauging the suitability of raising children as expats. If you incorporate the data on child rearing abroad along with the economic and quality-of-life measurements, China ranks first overall, following by Germany and Singapore. The study concludes that Germany is the best of these countries to raise expat children, that Thailand provides the best work-life experience for expats, and that Switzerland has the most favorable economy for expatriates. This map shows how the 34 countries compare on economic opportunities and quality-of-life for expats. It does not include the metrics on child rearing. Bluer countries are better for expats and redder countries are worse: You can see right away that the data are very favorable for expat life in Asia's developing economies. Companies in these countries prize expat workers and tend to pay them 15 percent more, the report explains. This, combined with lower costs of living, can give expats much higher spending power than they'd enjoy elsewhere. Expats in East and Southeast Asia also tend to report that their social lives become much more active on moving there, due perhaps to the boost in disposable incomes as well as better weather and proximity to beaches.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Still, I was surprised to see mainland China rank so high. The country's worsening air quality (here is the most shocking photo of Chinese air pollution I've ever seen) and food safety issues (watch this video on Chinese "gutter oil" if you dare), particularly severe in the major cities likely to host expats, have sent a number of expats packing as China once again becomes a "hardship" posting. Perhaps the economics really are that favorable to outweigh these costs.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Germany and Switzerland also scored well for expats, as both economies improve despite the larger European woes. Salaries for expats are unusually high in the German-speaking countries and expenses are lower than in the rest of the Europe, owing to export-driven economic growth. Strong social programs and high standards of living also tend to make the experience pleasant, even if expats do not live as a class-above as they do in many developing economies.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Middle Eastern countries tend be worse places for expats, owing to legislation that makes it tougher for foreigners to own property and because of formal and informal social restrictions that can cut back on quality of life. The exceptions are Bahrain and Qatar, two very wealthy and very small Persian Gulf states whose governments work to attract the wealthy expats they see as crucial to building businesses there. It should go without saying that HSBC's study does not consider "guest workers" in its measurements. Gulf states, particularly Qatar, have notorious reputations for mistreating migrant laborers from South and Southeast Asia, who work in difficult conditions and with few protections.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University A big surprise here may be the countries of Western Europe, which despite their wealth and high standards of living are considered among the worst countries to be an expat, according to the study. The report cites high taxes and costly services; expenses that might make sense if you're a citizen who plans to one day employ your country's substantial social services, but less so if you're an expat who pays into those services but doesn't fully benefit. The European Union's ongoing financial problems also mean that salaries are less competitive, particularly compared to the higher cost of living. Part of this may be that Western European companies, as well as foreign companies with offices in Western Europe, are not as willing to invest in growth with all the economic uncertainty. Otherwise, though, Western Europe ranks highly for child rearing, with high-quality education and child services relatively affordable.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Based just on this report, if you're thinking about flying off for the life of an expat and you don't want to have kids there, then you should consider China, Thailand or someplace else in Asia. And if you want to have kids abroad, then Germany should also be near the top of your list. **More maps from WorldViews:**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University • **40 Maps That Explain The World**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University • **Which countries are the most and least welcoming to foreigners**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University • **A map of the world's most and least racially tolerant countries**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

India’s roads are among the deadliest in the world. Can new laws tame drivers?

CHENNAI, India — When it opened in 2001, the East Coast Road in southern India gave drivers a smooth, modern link to coastal resorts and an open stretch of highway to gun their engines on weekends. The 425-mile road also is a glaring example of why, with just 1 percent of the world’s automobiles, India accounts for 15 percent of global traffic deaths, according to the World Bank. In 2013, there were 174 accidents on the East Coast Road, and 24 people died. So many men from the villages flanking the road have been run over by speeding vehicles and drunk drivers in the past decade that their bereaved wives are called “ECR widows.” India has some of the deadliest roads in the world, with more than 200,000 fatalities every year, according to the World Health Organization. The nation’s Supreme Court calls India’s roads “giant killers.” Experts say that many of the accused go free because of weak and outdated motor vehicle regulations, routine corruption, lagging investigations and painfully slow court trials. Amid rising middle-class anger and activism, the government began overhauling road safety rules last year, adding stiff penalties such as a roughly $4,600 fine and seven years in prison for reckless driving that results in the death of a child. But two months ago, officials rewrote the proposed legislation to lower the penalties, saying India cannot imitate the developed world. In the most recent revision, the penalty for reckless driving involving the death of a child, for example, was lowered to a $780 fine and a one-year prison term. “It is not possible to replicate 100 percent of the road safety laws of America, England or Canada in Indian conditions,” Nitin Gadkari, India’s minister of road transport and highways, said in an interview. “We have to look at our local conditions like density of population, road congestion, road quality, socioeconomic profile of our people. I do not want to impose such high penalties that it ruins poor people’s lives.” As a result, critics say a watered-down version of the Road Transport and Safety Bill, which probably will be introduced in Parliament in July, will do little to improve safety. Punishments for speeding and drunken driving have been reduced, a limit has been set on compensation for accident victims, and the powers of the proposed road safety regulator were shrunk. ****This month, some workers unions even urged Gadkari to cancel the mandatory level of education required for getting a driver’s license. “I want to cut the number of road accident deaths by half by 2019, but it is not easy,” he said. “Some say go, others say stop; some put up obstacles or pull you backward.” With rising affluence, owning a car in India has become easier. But bad driving habits, poor regulatory oversight and flawed road design are quite common. Speeding, running lights, drunken driving, riding motorcycles without helmets, and lane violations are rampant. According to officials, 25 percent of driver’s licenses in India are procured fraudulently. “What began as an effort to bring a strong road safety law has slowly turned into a farce,” said Piyush Tewari, founder of SaveLife Foundation, a public advocacy group that works on road safety. “Everybody is lobbying to dilute the law as much as possible. The government has buckled under pressure.” The truckers union threatened to protest. Automobile manufacturers objected to new vehicle recall rules — even though the best-selling new Indian cars failed a global crash test last year. “If you keep the penalties high, then it opens the room for negotiations with policemen on the ground and will increase corruption,” said Naveen Gupta, secretary general of All India Motor Transport Congress. “You are opening up a Pandora’s box.” In one of the most talked about cases, Indians were outraged this month that a court granted bail to Bollywood star Salman Khan as he appeals his conviction for driving over five homeless people sleeping on a sidewalk in Mumbai in 2002, killing one of them. Khan had originally been sentenced to five years in prison. In Kabali Saravanan’s ECR neighborhood, his family watched the news on TV with horror. His wife, a seamstress, was killed by a speeding car in January while on her daily morning stroll along the edge of the road. “There is one law for the poor people and another for the rich in this country,” said Saravanan, a rickshaw driver. The driver of the car that killed his wife, he said, was an 18-year-old son of a wealthy leather businessman who lives in a fancy beach house nearby. “What justice can I realistically expect in this country?” The accused’s family declined to give an interview. Police said they have applied for suspension of the 18-year-old’s driver’s license, but the trial has not begun. As India tried to bolster inadequate infrastructure by building new highways across rural areas in the past decade, very little money has been invested in driver education, road behavior, emergency response and trauma care. Many new roads do not have medians or reflectors. The East Coast Road is dotted with weekend holiday hot spots, such as amusement parks, crocodile preserves, ancient coastal temples and beach resorts. On Sundays, biker gangs from the city turn the road into a drag strip. “The city partygoers think the road belongs to them. They drive as if there are no villages and no people on either side of the road,” said Sumati Ravichandran, 35, an ECR widow in Vada Nemmeli village. Her husband lay there without any help for more than an hour. Medical experts say that half of those who died in road accidents could have been saved if they were admitted to a hospital in the first hour. Fearing long court cases and police harassment, bystanders often hesitate to help accident victims. Last year, the Supreme Court ordered the government to pass a law to protect good Samaritans who rush accident victims to the hospital. But the government has not delivered. Saravanan said the courts cannot bring his wife back. And he has little hope for justice. “They will use every trick they know to keep their son out of jail. But what about my 7-year-old daughter who has been left motherless?” Saravanan said, sitting by his wife’s motionless sewing machine. **Read more:** After megastar and politician avoid jail, India wonders if its VIPs are above the law Salman Khan, Bollywood megastar, sentenced to 5 years for ‘culpable homicide’ New Delhi traffic is nuts. Here’s what happened when it briefly banned cars. Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Unchecked climate change could bring extremely dangerous heat to South Asia, scientists warn

Extreme temperatures in South Asia could reach dangerous thresholds by the end of the century if we don’t curb our greenhouse gas emissions, according to an alarming new study. This means millions of people in the densely populated region could face serious heat danger if the planet reaches high-end warming levels by 2100. The research provides a grim reminder that the most vulnerable populations are often the least responsible for the progression of global warming, researchers said.  Human beings, like any other animals, have their physical limits. Above certain temperature and humidity thresholds the body can no longer function properly and will eventually die. Greater levels of humidity in the air can make higher temperatures even more dangerous because the moisture in the air inhibits the body’s ability to cool itself by sweating.  Generally, a wet bulb temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, or 95 degrees Fahrenheit — approximately the temperature of the outside of the human skin, which tends to be a few degrees cooler than the body’s core temperature — is likely to be lethal after just a few hours. To be clear, this number is a special kind of index that takes humidity into account, and is not always equal to the regular air temperature. A lethal wet bulb of 35 degrees Celsius can be reached through a variety of different combinations of air temperature and humidity — for instance, an air temperature of about 115 degrees Fahrenheit with a relative humidity of 50 percent, or an air temperature of about 100 degrees Fahrenheit with a relative humidity of 85 percent. Lethal wet bulb temperatures don’t occur anywhere in the world, even on the hottest and most humid days, Eltahir said. That’s not to say that extreme heat doesn’t still kill people — there are all kinds of factors that can make certain people more vulnerable to high temperatures, such as age, health conditions, dehydration or physical exertion, and every year thousands of deaths around the world are attributed to heat waves. But the lethal wet bulb temperature refers to conditions that almost universally lead to death within about six hours unless people are able to get away from the heat, such as by going indoors into an air-conditioned space.  The researchers used global climate models to simulate temperature changes across the region in response to two different climate scenarios: a business-as-usual trajectory, in which greenhouse gas emissions remain unmitigated into the future, and a more moderate scenario in which some mitigation takes place. Under the moderate scenario, an outcome similar to the global goal set by the Paris climate agreement, extreme temperatures in South Asia don’t ever reach the lethal limits. But they get troublingly close, with large areas of South Asia experiencing wet bulb temperatures of over 31 degrees Celsius, or about 88 degrees Fahrenheit, conditions that are still dangerous for human health, on certain days of the year. (Again, these conditions can be reached through a number of different, dangerous combinations of regular air temperature and humidity.) Under the business-as-usual scenario, certain areas of South Asia are projected to occasionally experience extreme conditions exceeding the lethal threshold, including parts of northeastern India and Bangladesh. Some of these locations are major urban centers, such as the cities of Lucknow and Patna in India, both of which have populations of over 2 million people. In most places, the most extreme wet-bulb temperatures are projected to occur about once a year by the end of the century. Altogether, the findings suggest that millions of people could be put at risk in the coming decades, and many may not have the means to protect themselves with air conditioning.   But Huber, author of the 2010 paper that helped inform the new research, adds that we’re not necessarily locked into the new study’s grim projections. Serious mitigation efforts could still help protect millions of lives.

Climate change is as dangerous as ISIS, says Kerry, and part of the problem is your airconditioning

When Secretary of State John F. Kerry was in Austria's capital Vienna recently to join discussions on climate change, chances were low that he encountered too many air conditioned rooms. To Americans used to cooler rooms in summer, this may just have been a simple cultural difference. For the climate negotiators, however, it most likely reflects a bigger divide between the U.S., Europe, and developing economies. Both Europe and North America are worried about some of the gases that are emitted from fridges and air conditioners. But apart from those concerns, European nations in particular are also looking with growing anger and skepticism at the United States' heavily reliance on air conditioning.  Rapidly growing use of air conditioning and fridges has already led to more energy consumption. Perhaps even more worrisome, it has also increased emissions of so-called HCFC gases that are known to fuel climate change. Kerry was in Vienna last Friday to help find an agreement to limit their international use — and he made clear that it was not a laughing matter.   "The concern is that if the world doesn’t transition away from HCFCs, that will cause problems because the developing world, including China and India, are poised — as they develop and as the climate warms — to become enormous markets for air conditioners and other uses of these chemicals," said Anthony Leiserowitz, the Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. While the U.S. and Europe agree that HCFCs should be phased out and replaced by less damaging gases, Europeans believe Americans should also do more to lower their reliance on air conditioning. While American demand for air-conditioning has continuously increased over the past decades, Europeans have started to think about alternatives. To be fair, summers in Vienna and northern Europe in general can hardly be compared to the hot, humid mess of a summer in Washington D.C. and many other American cities. Advocates of air conditioning cannot only be found in the U.S.: Lee Kuan Yew, a former prime minister of Singapore, called air conditioners the greatest invention of the last century. Studies suggest that in hotter countries, air conditioning can increase workers' productivity and make the countries richer. But in the long term, they are a danger and for European critics, its not so much the presence of air conditioning in the United States, but its over-use. Visitors to the U.S. often complain that Americans set their room temperatures way too low — making life more difficult for themselves, and for the world. "When friends from abroad or family from India have come to visit, they've been shocked by how cold we keep our homes, offices, classrooms, and shops," said Nikita Perumal, an American Fulbright grantee who researches human rights-based approaches to climate change. Anyone who has ever toured the U.S. during summer with European tourists might have had the same experience. Those observations are based on actual science: Most Americans prefer an average temperature of 70 degrees, according to earlier studies. But Europeans would consider such temperatures too cold. That's because Europeans are simply used to warmer indoors temperatures.  Many experts say that this makes hardly any sense, and Americans should adapt. "The temperature range that people find comfortable depends on the temperatures they have experienced in preceding days or weeks," said Cox. "If local high temperatures have been, say, around 70, then we feel most comfortable in the 70s indoors. If we've experienced highs of, say, 90, we may feel more comfortable in the mid-70s to the mid or upper 80s. But today we have whole populations that can go for weeks without experiencing any warm or hot temperatures, other than dashing across hot asphalt from the car to the office and back. How to start the adaptation process? That's a hard one." Europe has tried to come up with answers that might be worth copying. Work spaces now need to be built energy-efficiently, according to E.U. legislation. Brick walls, for instance, can prevent rooms from getting too hot naturally. "People are looking at a variety of solutions, including better building designs that don’t require as much air conditioning, as well as reducing waste energy overall," said Leiserowitz. Right now, the trend in architecture to facilitate the kind of air conditioning that foreign visitors often associate with a meat locker is to build hermetically sealed, low ceiling offices without external balconies that some have criticized for being claustrophobic. A more energy efficient approach would involve larger spaces, higher ceilings and natural flows of air that could both cool the office and make for a more enjoyable work environment. So, next time you feel stressed because your work place is too loud and fresh air is just too far away — perhaps blame air conditioning.