Why China’s air pollution is no match for determined expats
If there’s one sight that makes a mockery of being an expat
in China, it’s an eco-fair.
Every few weeks, a gaggle of expats gather outdoors to
munch on expensive plates of greens from the only organic farm near Shanghai,
before buying an upcycled lamp that costs more than the average monthly salary
for a local worker, and getting mildly tipsy on an imported craft beer, in a
vain attempt to pretend things are just like home.
In reality the best thing we could do for our wellbeing is
to stay indoors, sealed away from the polluting particles swirling in the air,
infecting our organs and lowering our life expectancies.
But expats don’t think like this. We are fighters. (Our boundless
enthusiasm possibly due to the unknown effects of noxiously high PM2.5
concentration in the air).
Just this week, I came across Swiss entrepreneur Liam Bates
whose indoor air quality monitor is about to hit the market. The Beijing-based
TV presenter turned engineer decided that the air quality in his apartment
should match that of the Swiss alps
No joke. In a city where the phrase ‘airpocalypse’ was
coined, he wanted his air to be as pure as driven snow.
Yet despite the shakily naive premise of his mission, Bates
appears to be on the brink of success.
For some reason, the expat brand of eco-fair optimism often
prevails. Foreigners living in China find ingenious ways to maintain their
quality of life against the odds, in the face of chronic environmental hazards.
We have over-the-counter-everywhere-but-China drugs flown in
by every visitor. We share information about new outlets for high-quality food
and drink with ferocious speed on WeChat. And when Shanghai’s preeminent
craniosacral massage therapist goes on holiday? Well, let’s just say
more than a few tears are shed.
But on air pollution, we like to take things to the next
level, and expats flock to air pollution gurus like moths to a flame.
Before Bates, everyone was talking about DIY superstar
Thomas Talhelm, the designer of the Smart Air Filter.
The young American academic, in China for a one-year
scholarship, decided that instead of spending upwards of £400 on air purifier
he would make one of his own by strapping a HEPA filter onto a cheap
flat-surfaced fan.
The results he published were impressive, and expats flocked
to buy the device. Sadly, it turned out that Thomas’s fan wasn’t quite the
game-changer we’d hoped for. My husband and I discovered we’d need about 20 of
them to purify all the air in our apartment, and reverted to the big expensive
ones again.
But we still live in hope. (Naturally, I have Liam’s Laser
Egg indoor air monitor on
pre-order as it claims to be the most accurate, low-cost gadget on the market.)
Expats living in China are regularly confronted with a
feeling that things can never change. That we have no influence over daily
problems such as air pollution, despite our best intentions.
But despite this sense of frustration, we continue to have
blind optimism about new products, ideas and possibilities – because without
such faith, we’d never survive.
Air pollution 'kills 7 million people a year'
WHO report says issue is now biggest single environmental
health risk and the cause of one in eight deaths worldwide
Air pollution kills about 7 million people worldwide every
year, with more than half of the fatalities due to fumes from indoor stoves,
according to a report from the World Health Organisation published on Tuesday.
The agency said air pollution caused about one in eight
deaths and had now become the single biggest environmental health risk.
"We all have to breathe, which makes pollution very
hard to avoid," said Frank Kelly, director of the environmental research
group at King's College London, who was not part of the WHO report.
One of the main risks of pollution is that tiny particles
can get deep into the lungs, causing irritation. Scientists also
suspect air pollution may be to blame for inflammation in the heart, leading to
chronic
problems or a heart attack.
WHO estimated that there were about 4.3 million deaths in
2012 caused by indoor air pollution, mostly people cooking inside using wood
and coal stoves in Asia. WHO said there were about 3.7 million deaths from
outdoor air pollution in 2012, of which nearly 90% were in developing countries
.
But WHO noted that many people were exposed to both indoor
and outdoor air pollution. Due to this overlap, mortality attributed to the two sources cannot simply be
added together; hence WHO said it lowered the total estimate from around 8
million to 7 million deaths in 2012.
The new estimates are more than double previous figures. The
increase is partly due to better information about the health effects of
pollution and improved detection methods. Last year, WHO's cancer agency
classified air pollution as a carcinogen, linking dirty air to lung and bladder
cancer.
WHO's report noted women had higher levels of exposure
than men in developing countries.
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"Poor women and children pay a heavy price from indoor
air pollution since they spend more time at home breathing in smoke and soot
from leaky coal and wood stoves," Flavia Bustreo – WHO assistant
director-general for family, women and children's health – said in a statement.
Other experts said more research was needed to identify the
deadliest components of pollution in order to target control measures more
effectively.
"We don't know if dust from the Sahara is as bad as
diesel fuel or burning coal," said Majid Ezzati, chair in global environmental
health at Imperial College London.
Kelly said it was mostly up to governments to curb
pollution levels, through legislation, measures such as
moving power stations away from big cities and providing cheap alternatives to
indoor wood and coal stoves.
He said people could also reduce their individual exposure
by avoiding travelling at rush hour or by taking smaller roads. Despite the
increasing use of face masks in heavily polluted cities such as Beijing and
Tokyo, Kelly said there was little evidence that they worked.
"The real problem is that wearing masks sends out the
message we can live with polluted air," he said. "We need to change
our way of life entirely to reduce pollution."
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/25/air-pollution-kills-7m-people-a-year
Smog
Smog hanging
over cities is the most familiar and obvious form of air pollution. But there
are different kinds of pollution—some visible, some invisible—that contribute
to global warming. Generally any substance that people introduce into the
atmosphere that has damaging effects on living things and the environment is
considered air pollution.
Carbon
dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is the main pollutant that is warming
Earth. Though living things emit carbon dioxide when they
breathe, carbon dioxide is widely considered to be a pollutant when associated
with cars, planes, power plants, and other human activities that involve the
burning of fossil fuels such as gasoline and natural gas. In the past 150
years, such activities have pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to
raise its levels higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years.
Other
greenhouse gases include methane—which comes from such sources as swamps and
gas emitted by livestock—and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were used in refrigerants
and aerosol propellants until they were banned because of their deteriorating
effect on Earth's ozone layer.
Another
pollutant associated with climate change is sulfur dioxide, a component of
smog. Sulfur dioxide and closely related chemicals are known primarily as a
cause of acid rain. But they also reflect light when released in the
atmosphere, which keeps sunlight out and causes Earth to cool. Volcanic
eruptions can spew massive amounts of sulfur dioxide into the
atmosphere, sometimes causing cooling that lasts for years. In fact, volcanoes
used to be the main source of atmospheric sulfur dioxide; today people are.
Industrialized
countries have worked to reduce levels of sulfur dioxide, smog, and smoke in
order to improve people's health. But a result, not predicted until recently,
is that the lower sulfur dioxide levels may actually make global warming
worse. Just as sulfur dioxide from volcanoes can cool the planet by blocking
sunlight, cutting the amount of the compound in the atmosphere lets more
sunlight through, warming the Earth. This effect is exaggerated when
elevated levels of other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap the additional
heat.
Most
people agree that to curb global warming, a
variety of measures need to be taken. On a personal level, driving and flying
less, recycling, and conservation reduces a person’s "carbon
footprint"—the amount of carbon dioxide a person is responsible for
putting into the atmosphere.
On a
larger scale, governments are taking measures to limit emissions of carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases. One way is through the Kyoto Protocol, an
agreement between countries that they will cut back on carbon dioxide
emissions. Another method is to put taxes on carbon emissions or higher taxes
on gasoline, so that people and companies will have greater incentives to
conserve energy and pollute less.
Nearly 9,500 people die each year in London because of air pollution – study
Nearly 9,500 people die early each year in London due to long-term exposure to air pollution, more
than twice as many as previously thought, according to new research.
The premature deaths are due to two key pollutants, fine
particulates known as PM2.5s and the toxic gas nitrogen dioxide (NO2),
according to a study carried out by researchers at King’s College
London.
The study – which was commissioned by the Greater London
Authority and Transport for London – is believed to be the first by any city in
the world to attempt to quantify how many people are being harmed by NO2. The
gas is largely created by diesel cars, lorries and buses, and affects lung
capacity and growth.
London, Birmingham, and Leeds are among
the UK cities that have been in breach of EU safety limits on NO2 for five
years, prompting legal action that
led to a supreme court
ruling in April that the government must publish a
clean-up plan by the end of the year.
Previous research attributed 4,267
annual premature deaths to PM2.5sin
2008, based on 2006 levels of the particulates. Subsequent falls in those
particulates and a change in methodology that excludes
natural sources of the pollutant sees that figure fall to 3,537 for 2010 levels
of PM2.5s in the new study.
However that fall is more than cancelled out by the
addition of an estimated 5,879 deaths from NO2 each year, bringing the total
early deaths from both pollutants in 2010 to 9,416.
Matthew Pencharz, the deputy mayor for
environment and energy, said that local authorities could only do so much and
the government needed to step in. “It’s [the new research] an important message
for government, where the supreme court judgment has already focused minds.”
Although the report found that a larger proportion of
deaths caused by PM2.5 were from particulates that originated outside the city
than within it, it found that most of the deaths linked to NO2 were because of
NO2 emissions from diesel vehicles and other sources within the capital.
Last year, mayor Boris Johnson came in for criticism
after a King’s researcher published figures showing
Oxford Street had the worst NO2 levels in the world, largely because of its high concentration of diesel
buses. The mayor later called for a
diesel scrappage scheme to tackle pollution in the capital.
But campaigners said the evidence showed the need for
more action. Alan Andrews, a lawyer at the NGO ClientEarth, which brough the
case which lead to the supreme court ruling, said: “This new research piles
more pressure on the government to come up with a clear and credible plan to
cut pollution from diesel vehicles.”
He added: “As shocking as they are, these deaths are
really only the tip of the iceberg. For every person who dies early from air
pollution, many more are made seriously ill, have to visit hospital or take
time off work.”
Dr Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung
Foundation, said: “Exposure to air pollution increases the risk of lung cancer,
impairs child lung development and increases the risk of hospitalisation among
people with a pre-existing lung condition. It is time we stop talking and take
immediate action to prevent more people being needlessly killed by the air that
they breathe.”
Jenny Bates, air pollution campaigner at Friends of the
Earth, said: “People have no choice with the air they breathe. This means we
have to redouble our efforts, stop tinkering around the edges,
and take really bold immediate action with a mix of cleaner vehicles and
cutting traffic levels, massive investment in safe cycling and walking, and
London-wide road charging.”
On Tuesday, the London Assembly’s environment
committee published a
report blaming diesel vehicles for the capital’s NO2 problem.
Assembly member Stephen Knight, who is on the committee, said: “As petrol
engines become cleaner with time it’s becoming clear that diesel emissions are
a large part of the problem.”
The study also looked at the impact of short-term
exposure to PM2.5s and NO2 during high pollution episodes, such as the one
that affected much of England in April, and
found that 2,411 hospital admissions for respiratory problems a year could be
blamed on the pollutants.
The government’s scientific advisers on the issue, the
committee on the medical effects of air pollutants, are expected to conclude
later this year that across Britain up to 60,000 early deaths annually can be
attributed to the two pollutants, because NO2 will be factored in for the first
time. The figure would represent a doubling on the current 29,000
from PM2.5s, and would put air pollution much closer to
smoking, which kills
around 100,000 people a year.
The mayor launched a consultation today on measures for
boroughs to tackle pollution hotspots. All but two boroughs, Bromley and
Sutton,failed to meet EU limits on NO2 in
2013, the latest year for which data is
available.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/15/nearly-9500-people-die-each-year-in-london-because-of-air-pollution-study
No
|
Vocabulary
|
Definition
|
Examples
|
1.
|
Mockery
|
Comments
or actions that are intended to make something seem ridiculous.
|
If there’s one
sight that makes a mockery of being an expat
in China, it’s an eco-fair.
|
2.
|
Gaggle
|
A
group of noisy people.
|
Every few weeks, a gaggle
of expats gather outdoors to munch on expensive plates of greens from the
only organic farm near Shanghai.
|
3.
|
Swirl
|
The
movement of something that twists and turns in different directions and at
different speeds.
|
In reality the
best thing we could do for our wellbeing is to stay indoors, sealed away from
the polluting particles swirling in the air,
infecting our organs and lowering our life expectancies.
|
4.
|
Expectancy
|
The
state of expecting or hoping that something good or exciting will happen.
|
In reality the
best thing we could do for our wellbeing is to stay indoors, sealed away from
the polluting particles swirling in the air, infecting our organs and
lowering our life expectancies
|
5.
|
Boundless
|
Without
limits; seeming to have no end
|
Our boundless enthusiasm
possibly due to the unknown effects of noxiously high PM2.5
concentration in the air
|
6.
|
Enthusiasm
|
A
strong feeling of excitement and interest in something and a desire to become
involved in it.
|
Our boundless enthusiasm possibly
due to the unknown effects of noxiously high PM2.5 concentration in the
air
|
7.
|
Noxious
|
Poisonous
or harmful
|
Our boundless enthusiasm possibly
due to the unknown effects of noxiously high PM2.5
concentration in the air
|
8.
|
Entrepreneur
|
A
person who makes money by starting or running businesses, especially when
this involves taking financial risks.
|
Just this week, I came across Swiss entrepreneur
Liam Bates whose indoor air quality monitor is about to hit the market.
|
9.
|
Ingenious
|
For
a particular purpose and resulting from clever new ideas.
|
Foreigners
living in China find ingenious ways to maintain their
quality of life against the odds, in the face of chronic environmental
hazards.
|
10.
|
Ferocious
|
Very
fierce, violent or aggressive; very strong
|
We share information about new
outlets for high-quality food and drink with ferocious speed
on WeChat.
|
11.
|
Preeminent
|
More
important, more successful or of a higher standard than others
|
And when Shanghai’s preeminent
craniosacral massage therapist goes on holiday?
|
12.
|
Smog
|
smoke
or other atmospheric pollutants combined with fog in an unhealthy or
irritating mixture.
|
Smog hanging over cities is the most familiar
and obvious form of air pollution
|
13.
|
Greenhouse
|
a
building, room, or area, usually chiefly of glass, in which the temperature
is maintained within a desired range, used for cultivating tender plants or
growing plants out of season.
|
Carbon
dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is the main pollutant that is
warming Earth.
|
14.
|
Emit
|
to
send forth (liquid, light, heat, sound, particles, etc.); discharge.
|
Though
living things emit carbon dioxide when they breathe, carbon dioxide
is widely considered to be a pollutant
|
15.
|
Propellants
|
a
compressed inert gas that serves to dispense the contents of an aerosol
container when the pressure is released.
|
greenhouse
gases include
aerosol
propellants
until they were banned because of their deteriorating effect on Earth's ozone
layer.
|
16.
|
Deteriorating
|
to
make or become worse or inferior in character, quality, value, etc.
|
greenhouse
gases include
aerosol
propellants until they were banned because of their deteriorating
effect on Earth's ozone layer.
|
17.
|
Spew
|
to
discharge the contents
|
Volcanic
eruptions can spew massive amounts of sulfur dioxide into the
atmosphere
|
18.
|
Global
Warming
|
an
increase in the earth's average atmospheric temperature that causes
corresponding changes in climate and that may result from the greenhouse
effect.
|
But
a result, not predicted until recently, is that the lower sulfur dioxide
levels may actually make global warming worse
|
19.
|
Exaggerated
|
abnormally
increased or enlarged.
|
This
effect is exaggerated when elevated levels of other greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere trap the additional heat.
|
20.
|
Curb
|
anything
that restrains or controls; a restraint; check.
|
Most
people agree that to curb global warming, a
variety of measures need to be taken
|
21.
|
Irritation
|
the
state of feeling annoyed, impatient, or angry.
|
One
of the main risks of pollution is that tiny particles can get deep into the
lungs, causing irritation.
|
22.
|
Chronic
|
(of
an illness) persisting for a long time or constantly recurring.
|
Scientists
also suspect air pollution may be to blame for inflammation in the heart,
leading to chronic problems or a heart attack.
|
23.
|
Mortality
|
the
state of being subject to death
|
"the
work is increasingly haunted by thoughts of mortality".
|
24.
|
Attribute
|
a
quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone
or something
|
Due
to this overlap, mortality attributed to the
two sources cannot simply be added together; hence WHO said it lowered the
total estimate from around 8 million to 7 million deaths in 2012
|
25.
|
Exposure
|
the
state of being exposed to contact with something
|
WHO's
report noted women had higher levels of exposure than men in
developing countries
|
26.
|
Legislation
|
Clubs
in England began to consider the question of legislation, and
to improve their greens
|
|
27.
|
Prompting
|
Persuasion formulated as a suggestion
|
London, Birmingham, and Leeds are among the UK cities that
have been in breach of EU safety limits on NO2 for five years, prompting
legal action that led to a supreme court ruling in April that
the government must publish a clean-up plan by the end of the year.
|
28.
|
Methodology
|
The system of methods followed in a particular discipline
|
Subsequent falls in those particulates and
a change in methodology that excludes natural sources of the
pollutant sees that figure fall to 3,537 for 2010 levels of PM2.5s in the new
study.
|
29.
|
Deputy mayor
|
Someone authorized to exercise
the power of mayor in emergencies
|
Matthew Pencharz, the deputy mayor for
environment and energy, said that local authorities could only do so much and
the government needed to step in. “It’s [the new research] an important
message for government, where the supreme court judgment has already focused
minds.”
|
30.
|
Scrappage
|
A government programme that gives drivers a financial incentive to
replace old cars with newer , more fuel-efficient ones
|
|
31.
|
Scheme
|
A large-scale systematic plan or arrangement for attaining some
particular object or putting a particular idea into effect
|
|
32.
|
Tinkering
|
An act of tempting to repair something
|
This means we have to redouble our efforts, stop tinkering
around the edges, and take really bold immediate action with a mix of cleaner
vehicles and cutting traffic levels, massive investment in safe cycling and
walking, and London-wide road charging.
|
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