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Things to take note when traveling to China

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670,000 smog-related deaths a year: the cost of China's reliance on coal


Smog killed 670,000 people in 2012, says mainland study on pollution

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 05 November, 2014, 3:32am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 05 November, 2014, 10:18am

Li Jing [email protected]

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A power plant pollutes the air over Changchun, in northeastern Jilin province. The health and environmental costs of coal use add up to HK$330 per tonne. Photo: AFP

Smog caused by coal consumption killed an estimated 670,000 people in China in 2012, according to a study by researchers that tries to put a price tag on the environmental and social costs of the heavy reliance on the fuel.

Damage to the environment and health added up to 260 yuan (HK$330) for each tonne produced and used in 2012, said Teng Fei , an associate professor at Tsinghua University.

The 260 yuan is made up of two parts: the health cost and the environmental damage caused by mining and transporting coal.

"With existing environmental fees and taxes of between 30 to 50 yuan for each tonne of coal, the country's current pricing system has largely failed to reflect the true costs," Teng said.

Tiny particulate pollutants, especially those smaller than 2.5 micrograms (known as PM2.5), were linked to 670,000 premature deaths from four diseases - strokes, lung cancer, coronary heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - in China in 2012, Teng said.

That translated to an external cost of 166 yuan for each tonne of coal consumed. Authorities levied only about 5 yuan as a pollution fee per tonne of coal used by consumers including power companies and iron, steel and cement producers.

Mining and transport add 94 yuan per tonne, including through damage to groundwater resources, subsidence, deaths and occupational diseases.

Beijing is considering replacing pollution charges with more stringent environmental protection taxes, but progress on legislation has been slow.

Li Guoxing , from Peking University's School of Public Health, said the full impact of coal use was still underestimated as the study did not take into account medical costs associated with other pollution-induced diseases such as asthma.

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Respiratory patients wait at a Hangzhou hospital. Photo: Reuters

"The health cost [of the study] is only based on the premature death figures due to the limitations of our research data," said Li. "It could be way higher if we also include medical costs for other chronic illnesses."

The study found that in 2012, more than 70 per cent of the population was exposed to annual PM2.5 pollution levels higher than 35 micrograms per cubic metre, the country's benchmark for healthy air quality.

The World Health Organisation sets its PM2.5 safety limit at an annual concentration of 10mcg/cubic metre. That class of particulate was officially recognised as a human carcinogen last year by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, especially its link to lung cancer and a heightened risk of bladder cancer.

In 2012, some 157 million people in China lived in areas where the annual PM2.5 concentration was higher than 100mcg/cubic metre - 10 times the WHO's recommendation.

A previous study published in British medical journal The Lancet said outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, or 40 per cent of the global total. Former health minister Chen Zhu said this year that pollution caused 350,000 to 500,000 premature deaths a year in China.

The new study - based on research from Tsinghua and Peking universities, the China Academy of Environmental Planning and other government-backed institutes - represents the latest lobbying efforts by some Chinese experts to cap coal consumption.

But this is a difficult task, as the country relies on the fuel for nearly 70 per cent of its energy.

Teng estimates there would be a further cost of 160 yuan per tonne, on top of the 260 yuan calculated in the study, if the long-term social impact of climate change from coal burning were considered.

Zhou Fengqi , a former energy official, said it was impossible for the country to radically slash coal consumption in the coming decades.



 

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High smog alert likely as pollution goes off the charts in Beijing, Hebei

High alert likely with smog forecast to blanket Beijing until Wednesday

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 22 November, 2014, 4:27am
UPDATED : Saturday, 22 November, 2014, 4:27am

Li Jing [email protected]

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A man in a mask walks in smoggy Shenyang, Liaoning province, where the pollution index was a hazardous 303 last night. Photo: Xinhua

Only one thing will be clear in Beijing this weekend - and it won't be the skies. More smog is on the way after pollution exceeded the maximum reading on the Air Quality Index in parts of the capital and 10 Hebei cities on Thursday and yesterday.

The dismal results came less than a fortnight after the capital experienced "Apec blue" skies during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Beijing is expected to be blanketed in smog from today to Wednesday, which could trigger an orange alert, the second-highest alert for air pollution, the environment ministry said.

While local governments said the onset of winter heating was to blame, others said it was payback as hundreds of factories ordered shut during the summit sought to make up for lost production time.

In Xinji , a leather and fur manufacturing hub in Hebei, one reason the air quality index rose above the 500 maximum was high levels of PM2.5 - the tiny particles most damaging to health - which hit 825 micrograms per cubic metre at about 11am yesterday, according to a city monitoring station. That is 10 times higher than the World Health Organisation's safe limit.

Other Hebei cities - including Langfang , Xingtai , Tangshan and Shijiazhuang - saw PM2.5 levels rise to about 500 micrograms per cubic metre around noon yesterday.

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Air pollution was also off the charts at several monitoring stations in eastern and southern parts of Beijing on Thursday night and yesterday morning, with residents complaining of a pungent odour.

Hebei authorities blamed the smog on poor weather and an increase in the use of coal at the start of the heating season, the China News Service reported.

But one Beijing microblogger was not convinced. "It seems one province is getting frantic to make up for its losses by switching all the factories on," the blogger wrote, posting a graphic showing PM2.5 levels surging above 500 across Hebei on Thursday night.

That post drew intense criticism from Hebei residents, who blamed Beijing for putting the squeeze on its neighbours and leaving the province little choice but to pursue heavy industries.

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Drivers use their lights in heavy smog in Shenyang in the northeast. Photo: Xinhua

The Lange Iron and Steel Research Centre, a Beijing-based consultancy, said in a report yesterday that iron and steel companies in Hebei would "gear up their production until the end of this year to compensate for losses", without elaborating.

Ma Jun, head of environmental group the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said that even though a lack of data made it difficult to say for sure that companies had stepped up output, many factories in the region were polluting far beyond the national limits. "The curbs only went into effect during Apec because they were 'political assignments', but everything is back to normal now," Ma said.

He said that without political pressure, local authorities were unlikely to activate stringent emergency pollution control measures next week.


 

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Green groups name and shame China's publicly listed polluters

Green groups call out companies for compounding the smog crisis

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 10 December, 2014, 3:36am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 10 December, 2014, 3:36am

Li Jing
[email protected]

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Hebei is China''s dirtiest province. Photo: Reuters

Mainland environmental groups have named and shamed big publicly listed polluters, accusing more than 200 Shanghai or Hong Kong-listed firms of worsening the country's smog crisis with unchecked emissions exceeding national standards.

Using pollution data published by government agencies, the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) for the first time compiled an extensive database of public companies' environmental practices, finding that 1,069 of the firms, or more than 40 per cent of those on the mainland, had recorded violations.

The biggest environmental offenders were firms involved in the power, cement, non-ferrous metal smelting, iron and steel, and chemical sectors, the group found.

The group found that 34 out of 36 listed iron and steel companies on the mainland had environmental violation records. And nearly 80 per cent of the mainland's listed power companies also had a record of breaches.

The group tracked more than 200 companies - many of them large state-owned firms - in the biggest smog-related sectors over 92 days between August and October, and found widespread environmental violations by their local branches and subsidiaries.

In Beijing yesterday, the institute and two local green groups from Hunan and Jiangsu provinces singled out a number of listed companies for repeated violations. These companies included top state enterprises Sinochem International Corp and Aluminum Corp of China Ltd (Chinalco).

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"Some of their subsidiaries were even emitting beyond national standards for most of the time during the 92-day period, meaning they were not running their pollution treatment facilities at all," IPE director Ma Jun said.

"Such findings are alarming, especially because many of the publicly listed companies are large state-owned firms, which should have better resources to tackle pollution.

"It also shows the failure of oversight of the local authorities."

Ma said that power plants, coking companies, cement mills and aluminium smelters in Shandong and Hebei provinces, the mainland's most polluted areas, pumped out high levels of pollution even on days of heavy smog, when emergency regulations demand a cut in production.

Sinochem and Chinalco could not be reached last night for comment and did not issue a company statement in response to IPE's findings.

But according to IPE, Chinalco said it would follow up on the issue in accordance with its internal procedures.

IPE's repeated calls to Sinochem's environmental affairs department were unsuccessful, it said.

Gu Beibei, lead researcher for the IPE report, said one Shandong state-owned enterprise, which had a record of violations in Jinan and Laiwu, told IPE that smog was "no big deal for us".

The environmental groups also called for investors to heed the risks of investing in such companies.

But Guo Peiyuan, founder of environmental consultancy SynTao, said: "Investors won't really care the environmental problems as long as the cost for violating the environmental laws are lower than abiding by them."

Additional reporting by Kwong Man-ki


 

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Road accidents kill more people in China than cancer, Lancet study finds


PUBLISHED : Friday, 19 December, 2014, 2:07am
UPDATED : Friday, 19 December, 2014, 9:05am

Zhuang Pinghui [email protected]

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Rescuers work at the site of a road accident on State Highway. Photo: Xinhua

Road injuries have emerged as the third-leading cause of death in China, compared with eighth in the developing world and ahead of a range of cancers, according to a global study in The Lancet medical journal.

But one expert said the mainland's road toll could be even higher than reported.

The Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 of 188 countries between 1990 and last year found that stroke and coronary heart disease were the top mortality factors in mainland China, as they were in the rest of the world. But road accidents were ahead of chronic obstructive lung disease, liver cancer, kidney cancer and stomach cancer. The leading causes of death in Taiwan were coronary heart disease, stroke and liver cancer, while self-harm - a deliberate injury to oneself - was sixth and road injuries seventh.

Mainland China's road toll shows no sign of abating, with 87,218 road deaths from 426,378 accidents in the first 10 months of this year, a 1.9 per cent year-on-year increase in fatalities, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

Professor Li Liping, director of the Injury Prevention Research Centre at Shantou University's medical school, said the real number of road fatalities could be even higher because a death was only included in the road toll if it occurred within one week of the traffic accident. "In other parts of the world, it's a month," she said.

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Li attributed the high numbers to low standards of driving and the failure of the road network to keep up with the rapid increase in the number of cars in the country.

There were just 24 million cars in 2003 but by last year that number had exploded to 137 million, with 31 cities having more than 1 million cars each, according to the ministry. Eight cities, including Shenzhen, Tianjin, Shanghai and Hangzhou, had more than more than 2 million, while Beijing alone had more than 5 million cars.

And unlike in the West, where people learn to drive in their teens, most people in China take to the road at a later age and without much practical experience. "Unskilled new drivers are another important factor of so many road accidents," Li said.

Wang Changjun, director of the ministry's Traffic Management Research Institute, said the poor road safety awareness among drivers was the main cause of accidents.

The study also found that suicide continued to be a major public health problem, with more than half of suicides globally occurring in China and India. But while it was decreasing rapidly in China, it was rising in India. Both countries have undergone economic growth and urbanisation, a key factor that reduced access to lethal pesticides, a common method of suicide in both countries, according to the study.

 

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'Close your windows' Shanghai residents told, as government issues air pollution alert

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 11 January, 2015, 5:19am
UPDATED : Sunday, 11 January, 2015, 10:37am

Adrian Wan [email protected]

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Pollution covers the Beijing skyline yesterday. Photo: ChinaFotoPress

Lingering bad air forced Shanghai to issue an emergency pollution alert yesterday, putting it on par with the more usually polluted capital Beijing.

Elderly people, children and those with heart and lung conditions in both cities were advised against outdoor activities yesterday. Shanghai also advised residents to limit the time they opened their windows at home.

In response to heavily polluted air, the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau raised the blue emergency pollution alert - the lowest on a four-tier warning system. That was on top of a yellow haze alert that had been in place since Friday afternoon.

Shanghai's official air quality index (AQI) hit a high of 275 early yesterday. The blue emergency alert, the city's first this year, meant the AQI was forecast to be between 201 and 300 (heavily polluted). The bureau said strong winds would help disperse the pollution and haze today and tomorrow.

The service also demanded that the municipal and city governments clean rubbish from roads more frequently, and advised against outdoor events that would attracts crowds.

Some bloggers pointed out that Shanghai has only had three clear days so far this year, with the remaining days either classified as polluted or heavily polluted.

"Like Beijing, masks have become a necessity in Shanghai now," one blogger wrote.

In Beijing, the Environmental Protection Bureau raised a yellow pollution alert - the third highest - at 5pm yesterday, warning that a lack of wind would prevent pollutants from dispersing, resulting in heavy pollution from tomorrow to Wednesday. "Unfavourable" weather conditions and regional pollution were blamed.

"To ease the accumulation of pollutants, we have taken the measure to raise the yellow alert in advance, and ask that all member departments take steps to cut emission," it said on Weibo.

Discontent about the environment has grown on the mainland, leading the government to declare a "war on pollution" and vowing to cut coal use in some areas. Beijing's city government has also shut factories and introduced new fuel standards.

Beijing recorded a slight drop in smog levels last year, the bureau has said, though the average density of some pollutants was more than triple World Health Organisation limits.

 

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Double jeopardy of fog and heavy smog across northern, central China

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 14 January, 2015, 11:45am
UPDATED : Thursday, 15 January, 2015, 9:56am

Chris Luo [email protected]

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A man surveys the Forbidden City in Beijing on Wednesday as air quality in the capital descended to heavily polluted levels. Photo: Simon Song

Heavy fog and air pollution were forecast for Beijing and central China on Thursday and Friday, the National Meteorological Centre warned on Wednesday as air quality plunged in the capital.

The centre issued both a yellow smog alert - the lowest level on the three-tier system - and a fog warning for Beijing, neighbouring Tianjin and Hebei province.

Watch: Heavy fog and air pollution hover over Beijing

The warnings came as official air quality index readings in both Beijing and Tianjin surpassed 200 on Wednesday morning to reach "heavily polluted levels". Under those conditions children and the elderly are advised to stay indoors.

Pollution - albeit less severe - was also expected to blanket large parts of Shanxi in the west, the central provinces of Hubei and Hunan , and several northeastern regions.

The centre added that a wide area would also be covered by fog. Hubei and Hunan provinces would have "dense fog" that would limit visibility to between 200 metres and 500 metres.

Beijing, Sichuan, Kunming and Hunan would also be cloaked in fog, cutting visibility to between 500 metres and 1km.

Forecasters said conditions in these regions would begin to improve from Friday morning as a cold front from the north cleared the air.

The centre also reported sporadic snow in the capital, the first of the year. More snow was expected across northern China, including Beijing, over the next two days.


 

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China reveals 10 deadliest roads where 1,203 accidents claimed lives of 451 people


Road injuries are the third-leading cause of death in the country, says a study published last December by 'The Lancet' medical journal.

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 11 February, 2015, 5:48pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 11 February, 2015, 5:48pm

Nectar Gan [email protected]

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A school van is lifted from a reservoir after an accident in Xiangtan, in Hunan province, last July, which killed 11 people, including eight children. Photo: Reuters

China’s traffic authority has made public the country’s top 10 most dangerous roads where 451 people were killed in 1,203 accidents last year, Xinhua reports.

The list, announced yesterday, was compiled based on the nation's roads where the highest number of accidents and fatalities were recorded.

The 451 fatalities on the 10 sections of road, stretching a total of 153km, mean that there were an average of 30 deaths on every 10km of these roads.

Most of the top 10-ranked sections of road were on major highways linking China’s metropolises. The section where most deaths took place – 149 fatalities – was on a state-level road near Beijing and Tianjin.

The other sections were located near other major cities including Jinan, Guangzhou, Lanzhou, Xian, Chengdu and Hangzhou.

China’s roads are notoriously dangerous.

Road injuries are the third-leading cause of death in the country, says a study published last December by The Lancet medical journal.

 

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China's roads are dangerous because many of the drivers there are reckless, inconsiderate and dont obey rules. Some drive long distances and are tired but still carry on driving to meet schedules and many of them chat on their mobiles while driving at high speed.
 

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Stay alert beneath the dome

By Ni Dandan Source: Global Times Published: 2015-3-5 19:08:03

If you've lived in Shanghai for a while, then you're no stranger to smog. But after the documentary film Beneath the Dome came out last week, the attention called to the damage that the constant smog does to people's health grows ever higher.

Although the city's environment bureau said that in 2014, Shanghai saw a 16-percent year-on-year decline in the level of PM2.5 pollutant particles, persistent coughing troubled a large number of people over the past winter.

A more worrying fact is that lung cancer has become the most lethal type of cancer in China. The public can't help but relate the high cancer rate to the growing problem of air pollution.

A few doctors in the city told the Global Times that although the country lacks studies and evidence to prove the direct link, theoretically such a conclusion has a foundation. "The causes of lung cancer are quite complex and China is still in the early stage of researching smog. But given that the main air pollutant in China, PM2.5 particles, can carry carcinogens like benzo(a)pyrene, it makes sense that constantly breathing in the particles could cause cancer," said Huang Yanxi, a doctor in the department of respiratory medicine at Shanghai International Medical Center.

He added that in some developed countries like Japan, the US and Canada, research has shown that the number of lung cancer cases increases as PM2.5 levels rise.

Yang Kun, a pulmonologist and medical director of United Family Home Health, also believes there's a close relationship. "Preliminary research conducted in Europe has proved that PM particles are linked with lung cancer just like smoking."

What's worse is that these particles can also cause damage to the cardiovascular system and are hazardous to the young and the old, Yang said.

Obvious impact

Although it might take a few more years for the country to study the relationship between smog and lung cancer in China, the city's doctors are sure that the foul air had a lot to do with the large number of patients who came down with respiratory illnesses over the past winter.

"After a few smoggy days straight, the number of patients at our clinic would apparently increase. They were troubled by different types of problems, like coughing, rhinitis, faucitis and tracheitis," said Fei Gang, an ENT specialist with ParkwayHealth.

Compared with more than 20 years ago, the number of faucitis patients today is incredibly large, Fei said. "Some 90 percent of our outpatients have this problem. I can't say it's all a direct result of the smog. But the air does impact people's health in a subtle and gradual process," he said.

Based on his clinical experience, Yang said foreigners new to the country were more prone to be affected by the smog. One of his American patients started to suffer from asthma within three months of arriving in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, in northeastern China.

"The outbreak of his asthma was very serious and difficult to alleviate," Yang said. "During that period, the AQI (Air Quality Index) in Harbin ranged between 300 and 500, meaning the air was severely polluted. His condition only improved after he stayed in Shanghai for a while. That case shows an obvious direct link with the air quality. That man eventually decided to leave China."

According to the doctor, the health of foreign children new to the city could also be fragile in such an environment. He has seen children sent for emergency treatment because they had difficulty breathing. "Some foreign children have a history of asthma. But the disease can be controlled, and without an apparent trigger, it won't easily recur. I believe, the high PM2.5 level is just the trigger here, which people normally don't have the ability to control or avoid," Yang said.

Get protection

Given the reality, the doctors gave a few suggestions for how people could better protect themselves. They strongly recommended that people check the frequently updated AQI figures.

If one has to travel outside on a day when the AQI is higher than 100, the doctors said wearing a mask that can filter the particles, like the N95 respirator, can be helpful. But the tight respirators could make people feel extremely uncomfortable, so Fei proposed wearing a big, thick scarf. "Apparently, a scarf cannot ward off tiny particles. But it helps keep one's nasal and oral cavities warm and wet, which is beneficial," he said.

On a smoggy day, one has to drink enough water to accelerate the discharge of toxic substances, Fei said. "Drinking water helps to stimulate the secretion of sputum crudum, which helps to discharge dirty stuff. An adult needs to drink between 1.5 and 2 liters of water a day," he said, adding that taking vitamin C pills, eating apples or drinking orange juice also help.

Air purifiers have been highly controversial. Fei suggested that households turn on a purifier only when the AQI surpasses 100, otherwise the level of carbon dioxide gets too high in the closed environment, which also does harm to people's health.

Yang agrees, saying that indoor pollutants like formaldehyde could be another threat if doors and windows are shut for too long. He suggested households open their windows for twice a day, 20 minutes each time, even on a polluted day.

But Huang has a different point of view. He doesn't believe air purifiers available on the market can do much with PM2.5 particles. "Most purifiers only function to absorb dust and peculiar odors. They might be able to filter away an extremely small amount of tiny particles, but I doubt whether they can bring about a fundamental change," he said.

All the doctors believe it's not a professional respiratory device or air purifier, but a fundamental improvement to the environment that can ease people's worries. And with a growing awareness about the issue, each individual should make their own contribution by either quitting smoking, taking public transportation instead of driving, or other changes.

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Fei Gang, an ENT specialist with ParkwayHealth, examines a patient. Photo: Courtesy of ParkwayHealth

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The Bund is shrouded in smog Tuesday. Photo: CFP


 
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