As people in Beijing and northern China struggle with severe air
pollution this winter, the toxic air is also making life hard
for plants and even food crops of China, say researchers who
have been looking at how China's plants are affected by air
pollution. Beijing's extreme smog event this week has made
headlines, with the American Embassy calling the pollution
levels “hazardous” and Beijing writer Zheng Yuanjie blogging
that "the air smells like sulfur perfume, as the capital city
currently looks like a poisonous huge gas can," according to a
report on Al Jazeera. “In the last 50 years there has been a
16-fold increase in ozone pollution” in the Beijing area, said
Hanqin Tian of Auburn University in Alabama, who studies the
effects of China's pollution and climate change on plants. He
said the soup of pollutants, including harmful sulfur and
nitrogen compounds “is definitely expanding into new areas; into
the countryside.” Ozone is particularly harmful to plants
because it damages the pores on leaves, call