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The Definitive Understatement: China’s ‘Unbearable’ Smog (Video) Hard to Believe They Can Breathe!
China ‘Unbearable’ Smog
February 25 2014
And I thought Calif was bad! The China blog has featured pollution more than once this week – and we make no apologies for that. The pollution currently blanketing northern China is an extraordinary and unnatural phenomenon.
Are you breathing and prepared?
The air quality is so bad it’s comparable to living near a forest fire. The scale of the consequences to human health are only beginning to be understood. Air pollution is thought to cut life expectancy in northern China by five years compared to the south of the country. One study estimated pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths a year in the country – and the real impact may be even worse than those figures suggest.
This is certainly an environmental disaster and a public health crisis. But it also has the potential to become a huge political problem.
After years of denying the issue really existed, the central government has recently accepted that pollution is of genuine concern. It now publishes figures for the air quality in China’s major cities (the accuracy of some is still contested), and in 2013 promised $275bn (£165bn) to tackle the issue in the next five years, setting targets for air quality improvements.
Read More:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china…
