One friend, who works for an environmental nonprofit in Beijing, advised: “I have a Sportsta mask made by Respro, a U.K. company, which has a replaceable filter, which you can replace every 2 to 3 months with regular use. However, size-wise, it’s not great for women, especially women who have smaller faces.” To function optimally, he added, “It should be a snug fit.” Ideally, I should locate a store in the U.S. that sells them, but as fallback, such high-end foreign-made gas masks are now selling briskly on Taobao.com, China’s leading e-retailer.

In addition to buying face masks, people in China who can afford them are also picking up indoor air filters. Most office workers spend 80 percent of their time indoors, but Beijing’s poorly insulated buildings can’t fully keep the smog outside. Meanwhile, in the wake of a recent scandal over China’s failure to properly regulate bottled water, I’ve also been advised to purchase equipment for filtering water at home or in hotel rooms. For all China’s success in building some kinds of modern infrastructure—airports and highways, for instance—a string of recent public-health lapses has given rise to a grim, do-it-yourself approach to pollution control and personal safety. (To be sure, there’s a limit to which anyone can truly insulate herself from the city she breathes in.)

Air pollution in Beijing reached record levels in January as the capital city battled a winter “airpocalypse” that one Chinese public health expert called worse than SARS. The levels of two key air pollutants in Beijing rose by nearly 30% in the first three months of the year, and Larson also points out that China just suffered its smoggiest March in 52 years. Several recent studies have linked pollution to birth defects and premature deaths in China, and the country’s new leaders have declared “ecological progress” a priority even though bureaucratic infighting has threatened to complicate any potential solutions.

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Shanghai’s busy streets teem with Buicks, Fords, Volkswagens, and Toyotas. More than 9 out of 10 cars in the world’s most populous city are made by foreign companies, and it’s not just a reflection of mainlanders’ preference for Western design. Some local automakers say the city’s license plate auctions are responsible for their weak sales. Shanghai is one of four Chinese cities that limit car purchases by imposing quotas on registrations. The prices paid at Shanghai’s license auctions in recent months—90,000 yuan ($14,530)—have exceeded the cost of many entry-level cars, the stronghold of Chinese brands such as Chery, Geely, and Great Wall. While residents with modest incomes may be able to afford an inexpensive car, the registration cost is often beyond their reach. “Whenever there’s a restriction of new car purchases through the quota system, there is always a big impact on lower-price cars like the ones we make,” says Lawrence Ang, executive director of Geely Automobile Holdings (175), whose Panda minicar sells for 37,800 yuan.

After Beijing (pop. 21 million) introduced a license plate lottery in January 2011, the combined share of Chinese brands sold there plunged by more than half, to 9.7 percent for the year, according to researcher IHS Automotive. In Shanghai, which began auctioning license plates in 1994, domestic brands made up only 8.9 percent of cars sold in 2011 (the most recent data available), less than a third the level nationwide, IHS reports.[...]

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A mysterious pestilence has befallen this island’s primeval forests, leaving behind the bleached, skeletal remains of dead trees that now dot the dark green mountainsides. Osamu Nagafuchi, an environmental engineer with a passion for the island and its rugged terrain, believes he knows the culprit: airborne pollutants from smog-belching China, hundreds of miles upwind.

[…] These fears have reached a new level recently as China itself has issued more public warnings about the growing health risks from its cities’ gray, soupy air. While Mr. Nagafuchi and a small number of collaborators say their research is not politically motivated, they admit that they may be finding more receptivity among a public that already resents China for supplanting Japan as Asia’s largest economy, and for what is seen as its haughty attitude in a territorial dispute over islands both countries claim.

[…] Residents who believe the pollution is caused by China described feeling helpless, saying they doubt there is any action their government can take even if it becomes convinced Mr. Nagafuchi is right.

“There is not much we can do about this, except ask the Chinese to spend more money on environmental cleanup,” said Mr. Tetsuka, Mr. Nagafuchi’s research assistant. “I’m afraid it will only get worse and worse.”

Others feel that Japan can achieve more than just appealing to China and selling air purifiers to its wealthier residents. Global Times’ Lin Meilian reports that scholars and officials from the two countries gathered in Beijing last month to discuss environmental cooperation. (Lin also briefly explores the limited effectiveness of unpruned nose hair as a pollution filter.)

Hideaki Koyanagi, director of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)’s Beijing office, sees the air pollution issue as an opportunity to improve Sino-Japanese relations.

“Pollution knows no borders,” Koyanagi told the Global Times. “What the Japanese people don’t understand is if we help to improve the air quality in China, it will eventually benefit Japan.”

[…] Koyanagi wrote an op-ed piece for the Kyodo News, outlying China’s efforts to control air pollution such as shutting down polluting and unsafe factories and promoting clean energies.

“Blaming China can’t solve the air pollution problem,” Koyanagi said. “It is very important for Japan to use its experience to help China with its policymaking and understand that helping China is helping itself.”

At The New York Times’ Latitude blog in February, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Alexandra Harney described how political self-preservation overcame vested interests and short-term economic imperatives, enabling Japan to address its own pollution problems:

Five decades ago, people were asking similar questions about Japan. Even as the world marveled at the country’s 10 percent annual growth, alarm was growing over air pollution in several cities. Emissions of nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide tripled during the 1960s. Japan became known for pollution-related illnesses: Yokkaichi asthma, Minamata disease (mercury poisoning) — both named after the cities where they first appeared — and cadmium poisoning, known as itai-itai, or “ouch-ouch,” because of the excruciating bone pain it caused.

[…] It was only when citizens’ movements, which grew out of protests against the 1960 U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and the Vietnam War, got the attention of opposition parties in the 1960s and early 1970s that the government was forced to confront pollution. “I saw the government and L.D.P. as responding just enough, just in time, when the pressure got strong enough that they could defuse the opposition and stay in power,” said Timothy George, a professor at the University of Rhode Island and the author of a book on Minamata disease.

The first result was a blizzard of laws — 14 passed at once — in what became known as the Pollution Diet of 1970. Air pollution fell dramatically in the years that followed.

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There are no statistics for the flight, and many people are still eager to come work in Beijing, but talk of leaving is gaining urgency around the capital and on Chinese microblogs and parenting forums. Chinese are also discussing holidays to what they call the “clean-air destinations” of Tibet, Hainan and Fujian.

“I’ve been here for six years and I’ve never seen anxiety levels the way they are now,” said Dr. Richard Saint Cyr, a new father and a family health doctor at Beijing United Family Hospital, whose patients are half Chinese and half foreigners. “Even for me, I’ve never been as anxious as I am now. It has been extraordinarily bad.”

He added: “Many mothers, especially, have been second-guessing their living in Beijing. I think many mothers are fed up with keeping their children inside.”

Few developments have eroded trust in the Communist Party as quickly as the realization that the leaders have failed to rein in threats to children’s health and safety. There was national outrage in 2008 after more than 5,000 children were killed when their schools collapsed in an earthquake, and hundreds of thousands were sickened and six infants died in a tainted-formula scandal. Officials tried to suppress angry parents, sometimes by force or with payoffs.

But the fury over air pollution is much more widespread and is just beginning to gain momentum.

See also an interview in the Toronto Star with pioneering environmentalist Ma Jun about the prospects for a cleaner environment in China.

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BMW isn’t alone. The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China says air pollution is a key challenge facing companies here, and is an underlying reason why many expatriate workers choose to leave. Soaring levels of pollution are driving expatriates out of Chinese cities, and dissuading others from coming. That is a problem for many multinationals who need to attract some of their brightest and most experienced executives to China at a time when the Chinese market is becoming central to their global success. Volkswagen AG, for instance, is managed in China by Jochem Heizmann, a member of VW’s global management board.

Over the years, Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai have become magnets for global entrepreneurs and adventurous young M.B.A. graduates seeking opportunities in China’s booming economy. Among them was Marc van der Chijs, who arrived 13 years ago and co-founded leading Chinese online video site Tudou. In March, he packed up and left Shanghai, and headed for Vancouver.

“I was looking for a place where my kids can grow up in a healthy environment,” he said.

Earlier this month, Jamil Anderlini of The Financial Times reported that foreign companies are bracing for an exodus of foreign employees this summer, when the school term ends, and one executive at a search firm told the China Daily that “air quality is absolutely the main reason” that the number of foreigners applying for teaching positions in Beijing has dwindled by more than half. The state-run Global Times conceded last week that Beijing had lost some of its appeal due to the smog-induced health issues:

Some netizens were eager to use the report to criticize. They said China was still at the stage of the industrial revolution that the West once experienced. It seems that Beijing is unable to provide both business opportunities and high living standards.

The government has promised to make greater efforts to tackle the pollution crisis. For instance, 100 billion yuan ($16 billion) is to be spent over the next three years to turn Beijing green. But still, there is no fundamental solution in the short term.

Expats aren’t the only people fleeing China’s smog-cloaked major cities, as middle-class Chinese have also started to head west in search of cleaner air. Last week, Tea Leaf Nation’s Shi Yunhan also reported that migrant workers have cited pollution levels in Beijing as a reason for moving home. Tea Leaf Nation’s Rachel Wang also noted that many Chinese – especially the wealthy and well-educated – are also leaving the country altogether:

It is not hard to understand what may have pushed this group of Chinese away from their hometowns, given recent news about pollution, food safety, quality of life, education and infrastructure in China. Even the inconvenience of carrying a Chinese passport, which makes international travel a nuisance, can drive some people to seek passports of a more convenient color.

This wave of emigration has left a bitter taste in the mouths of some who cannot leave, while others expressed understanding. Wrote one user on microblogging platform Sina Weibo, “Capital is continuously being transferred abroad, leaving a mess at home.” Another commented, “With high housing prices, skewed education and healthcare systems, and a worsening environment…even basic reproductive rights have also been taken away. With all of this, you can’t blame those who are able to do so for emigrating, they just want to find an environment that is just and suitable for living.”

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In a March issue of China Weekly, reporter Gong Xi tells the story of two women whose lives have been turned upside down by the smog.

The Beijing Patient

Capital city of smog.

“I don’t know how, but I got lung cancer.”

Mother Qin, 49, pale, and emaciated, is lying on a bed in Wangjing Hospital, Beijing. You have to pay close attention to hear her voice. Her daughter, Tongtong, is sitting next to her, firmly grasping her mother’s hand, glaring at the slowly dripping IV solution.

The ward is crowded with an endless stream of family and friends visiting patients. Only Mother Qin’s bed is quiet. Next to her bed, there are no flowers or fruit baskets, only a meal tray and a bowl of pears boiled in rock sugar.

The nurse on duty lifts the half-closed curtain. But there is no sunshine.

Beijing is shrouded in heavy smog. Looking out the glass on the 18th floor, everything is white. In January 2013, Beijing has already had 25 days like this.

Lifting her eyelids and looking through the window, Mother Qin can’t help but let out two coughs.

Cancer from Heaven

Mother Qin had been a normal Beijinger, living a very normal life. She spent her days mostly at home, her work unit, the vegetable market, and the supermarket.

She lived very close to her work unit, only a ten-minute walk away. She worked in the mail room and was in charge of delivering newspapers, documents, and other easy tasks. Everyday during the noon break, she went to the vegetable market near her home to buy the day’s fresh vegetables and cook her lunch. She seldom ate out.

“My mom is just a normal women. She doesn’t have a lot of education or a high emotional quotient. She’s just a very common woman, a normal housewife,” her daughter Tongtong says. Mother Qin didn’t have any particular hobbies. Her main pastime was going to supermarket. She could ride her bike to three or four supermarkets in one day.

Every day after dinner, as long as it wasn’t raining or snowing, she would go out for a walk. She held onto this habit for nearly ten years. Those ten years also saw a rapid growth of lung cancer patients in Beijing.

In 2011, one after another report on air pollution appeared. Beijing’s air pollution index topped the nation. The capital city of China was gradually turning to “the capital city of smog.” More and more, air pollution far exceeded safe levels. But at the time, neither 2.5 micrometer particular matter (PM2.5) measurements nor the air pollution index had official standards. Mother Qin never thought about the air quality when she took her walks.

“At home,” Mother Qin says with a weak voice, “I would watch TV dramas and such, and rarely cared about the news. When I took walks, I never used any protection. Nobody wore face masks when they went out in the evening.”

In 2012, Mother Qin starting to feel a tingling in her chest and sometimes could hardly breathe, but she didn’t take it seriously. At the beginning of March, Mother Qin was sorting newspapers in the mailroom when she suddenly felt pressure in her chest and difficulty breathing, as if a heavy object was pressing on her back. The feeling continued for the whole day. Back home in the evening, Tongtong saw that her mother was not feeling well and took her to the nearby hospital. Her blood pressure had already jumped to 110/180. It was past 10 p.m., and the outpatient department was closed for the day. Mother Qin could not have a comprehensive check at that time. She could only control her blood pressure for the time being.

The next day, Tongtong took Mother Qin back to the hospital for a CT scan of her chest. The doctor found excessive fluid in both lungs, which had to be immediately extracted by pleural tap. The doctor asked that Mother Qin be hospitalized to run further tests.

March and April are peak season for respiratory diseases. All the hospitals were already full, and there was no chance to get a bed. After several rounds of turnovers, Mother Qin was finally able through personal connections to find space at Navy General Hospital.

After she checked in, doctors at Navy General Hospital ran comprehensive tests and found cancer cells in the fluid built up in her lungs. As Mother Qin went to the restroom, the doctor told Tongtong the diagnosis–lung adenocarcinoma, and it was late stage. The cancer cells had already spread from the lungs to the parietal pleura, the lung tissue attached to the chest cavity.

One Who Cannot Escape

Tongtong was stunned. She never expected her mother would ever get lung cancer. She knew that the most significant cause of lung cancer was smoking, but Mother Qin never smoked. And the  adenocarcinoma she had was the type least related to smoking.

Wang Fang, the doctor in charge of Mother Qin’s case, is an oncology specialist at Wangjing Hospital. “The patient doesn’t smoke,” she explains. “She was not in a second-hand smoke environment, either. She doesn’t have bad living habits or a family history of the disease. There are many causes of cancer. Although we cannot pinpoint the specific reason for her case, air pollution definitely plays a major role.”

Dr. Wang remarks that “genetic defects are a contributing factor to cancer. In Chinese traditional medicine, this is called ‘inner weakness.’ Some patients who are susceptible to respiratory diseases have this ‘inner weakness’ manifest in their heart and lungs. When they breathe polluted air for extended periods of time, they will inevitably get sick. Such stimulus can trigger cancer. Mother Qin is this kind of a patient. It might take five to ten years for a cancer cell to develop into a tumor. During these five to ten years, the environment has changed, she she has been breathing the kind of air which can lead to cancer. So the air pollution can be seen as the catalyst for her cancer.”

Doctor Wang Fang usually suggests that patients whose conditions are stable to stay with family and friends in the suburbs or beyond, in order to avoid the heavily polluted air of Beijing. This will extend the lifetime of the patient. She has two colleagues who also have lung cancer, both of whom learned they had the disease in the late stage. After their symptoms were under control, they fled downtown Beijing and rented a farmhouse in the suburb of Shunyi. Their symptoms have been very stable so far.

Zhong Nanshan, an academic at Chinese Academy of Engineering, has said, “Beijing has seen a 60% increase in lung cancer in the past ten years. The smog has a significant impact on the respiratory system because the air pollution permeates the whole environment, both outside and indoors. For every ten micrograms of PM2.5 in one cubic meter of air, the hospitalization rate for respiratory diseases can increase up to 3.1%. If the smog increases from 25 micrograms to 200 micrograms, the daily fatality rate can increase up to 11%. This is much worse than SARS. SARS can be isolated, but no one can escape air pollution.”

Mother Qin is one who “cannot escape.”

The White Lie

Once she learned her mother had cancer, 24-year-old Tongtong decided not to tell her mother the truth. Tongtong cried alone in the corridor for a long time. Then she wiped her tears, went back to the patient’s room, and smilingly told her mother, “Ma, the doctor just told me that you have tuberculosis. No need to worry. As long as we follow the treatment, it will go away.”

Tongtong just graduated from college last year. When she was 12, her father passed away in a car crash. Afraid that the child could not take the reality of losing her father, Mother Qin didn’t tell her daughter the truth at first.

12 years had past. Now sad news once again hit the family. This time, it was the daughter who chose to keep a secret. “When I was a kid, she kept the truth from me. Now I’m keeping the truth from her.”

Two types of treatment were presented to Tongtong: one was chemotherapy, the other an imported treatment called molecularly targeted therapy. Chemotherapy kills and controls the growth of tumor cells, but at the same time kills normal cells and immune cells. Targeted therapy is a new kind of anti-cancer medicine which blocks tumors from certain molecules necessary for their development into cancer cells.

Although her father passed away early, Tongtong grew up under her mother’s tender care. This was the first crucial decision of her life, and it concerned her mother’s life. Tongtong was helpless. She had no one to talk to. She couldn’t find anyone to talk to.

That night, Tongtong thought it through. Considering that chemotherapy would add to her mother’s physical and psychological burdens, Tongtong chose the more conservative treatment: targeted therapy.

The doctor told Tongtong that Mother Qin could take targeted therapy at home; no need to stay in hospital. If her situation got worse, she could come back for treatment. At the end of March 2012, Tongtong checked her mother out of the hospital.

After leaving Navy General Hospital, Tongtong stayed at home with her mother. Ignorant of her illness, Mother Qin was in a good mood. She believed that her health would soon be restored. Tongtong had to keep the secret. She put the cancer treatment capsules one by one into another medicine bottle. Mother Qin took the medicine everyday. Her health was gradually getting better. For nearly half a year, Mother Qin was in good shape. She could still go to the supermarket, cook, and sometimes go out to take a walk. Life was returning to normal. What was different from before was that Mother Qin would wear a face mask every time she went out.

When she was checking out of the hospital, the doctor warned Mother Qin that the air pollution was severe, that she should take protective measures when she went out, and should try her best to breathe fresh air. Tongtong bought an air purifier for the house. Mother Qin became attuned to news about air quality and air pollution. “The government can’t change the air pollution, never mind us,” Tongtong thought. “What I can do is to make my mom feel more comfortable. The air outside is bad, so the only thing we can do is to go out less often.”

The good times didn’t last long. In November 2012, Mother Qin’s symptoms worsened. She got weaker and weaker. She felt tingling in her back and fatigue from head to toe. She became irritable and lost her appetite. Mother Qin started to doubt her illness. She often asked Tongtong if she really had tuberculosis. Tongtong comforted her mother, saying that she ought not to have such a heavy heart; all medical treatment requires such a process.

At the end of December, the drugs Mother Qin normally took could not control the spread of the disease. Pungent smells made her cough violently, and her phlegm was speckled with blood. She ached so much that she couldn’t swallow food. She could only ingest liquid.

Regular painkillers could no longer alleviate Mother Qin’s pain. One day at the end of December, Tongtong went to the hospital to get clinical-grade painkillers for her mother. She was nervous all the way back, feeling that something was about to happen. When she got home, she saw Mother Qin lying on the sofa, hair unkempt, sweat drenched through the shirt from pain. Tongtong immediately poured a glass of hot water for her mother take the medicine. Mother Qin could hardly breathe. She mustered the strength to lift her arm and shoved the glass back into Tongtong’s hand. “Tell me, just what am I sick with?” Her daughter could keep the secret no more. Her eyes filled with tears, Tongtong said in one breath, “lung cancer.”

“Whaaa…” Mother Qin cried.

Mother Qin thought of quitting treatment several times. She thought late-stage cancer was incurable; all efforts were a waste of time. But under Tongtong’s persuasion, she went once again to Wangjing Hospital.

January 2013 was a smoggy month in Beijing. Mother Qin was very sensitive to changes in the weather. When the air was bad, she would cough, have trouble breathing, and feel unbearable pain all over her body. Now she had to take painkillers every day.

Targeted therapy loses its effect after one to two years of use. Mother Qin had poor immunity, so her health was on a fast decline.

When she was hospitalized, experts at Wangjing Hospital had a consultation about Mother Qin’s symptoms. Upon examination, they found the cancer cells had corroded her lymph. A large lump was growing on one of her lymph nodes. They decided to deploy a combination of Chinese and Western medicine in one final battle. They would administer injections primarily to kill cancer cells, and use Chinese medicine to help Mother Qin expand her trachea, eliminate phlegm, invigorate her blood and qi, and enhance her immunity. Now Mother Qin has to undergo transfusion five to six hours every day. Pin pricks dot the back of her boney hands.

A Concern Come Too Late

The fees for Mother Qin’s cancer treatment are huge. Excluding hospitalization, the medicine alone costs more than 10,000 yuan (about US$1,613) a month. The targeted drug she used to take when she was still at home cost 4,600 yuan for seven pills. Taking one pill per day meant a monthly cost of 20,000 yuan (about US$3,225). Most cancer treatment is not covered by medical insurance, and Mother Qin’s family finances are precarious. She has lost the ability to work. Tongtong just graduated and has no job. She has to rely on their limited savings for her mother’s  treatment. Yet this will barely make a dent.

Tongtong wishes she were a carefree little girl who could go shopping after work and come home to meals cooked by her mother. This normal and happy life has vanished. “I have to be tough. A somber day is still a day, a happy day is still a day. It’s worth it to spend whatever amount of money it takes to make my mom a little bit happier.”

In the hospital, Mother Qin’s mind wanders far and wide. She says to Tongtong, “My daughter, your dad passed away early. You have had a bitter life since you were young. You’ve finally grown up, and now Mom has this illness. Mom is encumbering you.”

“Mom, I’m still young. I’m not married and I don’t have kids. I only have you. As long as you are well, I am well, too. You took care of me the in the past few decades, and I will take care of you in the coming decades.”

Mother and the daughter can’t tell how many times they have had this conversation.

For convenience, Tongtong stays in her relative’s home near the hospital. Every day she gets to the hospital at 7 a.m. sharp to stay with her mother, and leaves at 9 p.m. These happen to be the two times of day when the air is at its worst. Every time she sees a smoggy sky, Tongtong puts on a face mask.

Doctors remind Tongtong and Mother Qin, “Right now the air quality  is very bad. Try not to go outside or open windows for ventilation. Breathe more oxygen to relieve pressure on the lungs.”

Sometimes, when there are patients ready to leave the hospital, the doctors will have them wait until the air quality has improved before releasing them.

Tongtong has also started to worry about the air. She regrets that her concern has come too late. “Before I was not too concerned. I just heard on the news that there are this many or that many breathable particles in the air, and reminders to take care. But the sky was clear and we couldn’t see or touch the particles, so we didn’t pay attention to the warnings. Now I can see with my own eyes. Everywhere the air is cloudy white. Honestly, I regret that I didn’t make my mom pay attention to it earlier.

“Even though it’s in the news every day, the government isn’t doing anything to address the issue. It hasn’t announced any policies or improved its ability to monitor air quality. It’s all just useless work. For an individual, no matter how hard he tries to strengthen his own environmental awareness, there’s almost nothing he can do about it. Not to mention that it’s only the very few who have this awareness. I recognize the seriousness of the air pollution because my mom got sick. But for those people who haven’t gotten sick, can they understand? Normal face masks can’t filter out PM2.5; we have to buy professional masks. Now it’s PM2.5, who knows what will come afterwards. Will we wear biosafety masks in the future?”

Tongtong asked the doctor to let her mother go home for Spring Festival. It’s hard to feel the holiday spirit from a hospital bed. The doctor observed Mother Qin for a few days, then agreed to Tongtong’s request.

On the second day of the holiday, the Spring Festival Gala was still replaying on TV. Their relatives were gathered at home. Mother Qin wore an oxygen mask, watching the sparkle of firecrackers through the window from her bed. Smoke from burning fireworks mingled with the smog in the air. Mother Qin furrowed her brow.

“Tomorrow will be another smoggy day.”

Mother Qin and Tongtong are pseudonyms.

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Mengyu Dong.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Exposure to environmental pollution, as well as changing diet and more sedentary lifestyles, are contributing factors, says Wang Ning, the center’s deputy director. Noting that the number of cancer diagnoses is rising in both rural and urban China, he told China Newsweek (no relation to the U.S.’s Newsweek) on April 7: “In the next 10 years, the cancer burden won’t be lowered—we can only hope to eventually stabilize it.” Wang’s research team estimates that by 2020 the total number of cancer deaths in China will climb from about 2.5 million to 3 million annually.

The levels of two key air pollutants in Beijing rose by nearly 30% in the first three months of the year, and Larson points out that China just suffered its smoggiest March in 52 years. Outdoor air pollution is believed to have led to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, several recent reports have firmed up the link between pollution and birth defects in China.

Reuters reported Wednesday that the effects of soil pollution have also begun to emerge, as evidenced by a new survey that showed toxic heavy metal remnants and traces of banned pesticides in soil samples across China:

Now Zhuang Guotai, head of the ecological department of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said a nationwide soil survey showed the countryside had paid a heavy price for an agricultural revolution that has seen grain production almost double in the last 30 years, despite a much reduced workforce.

Soil pollution is regarded as one of China’s most serious health threats, contaminating the food chain with pesticide and fertilizer run-offs as well as toxic elements like lead, arsenic and cadmium.

The problem is believed to be responsible for the high rate of birth defects and cancer in some of China’s old industrial regions.

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The pollutants — nitrous dioxide and particulate matter that is between 2.5 and 10 micrometers in diameter, called PM 10 — appeared to have surged sharply in January, showing levels 47 percent higher than the same month last year, according to the report by Beijing News that was translated into English by The Economic Observer. The report cited as its source Chen Tian, the head of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.

A third pollutant, sulfur dioxide, decreased slightly over the same three-month period.

Mr. Chen said the main reason for the increase in two pollutants was high levels of emissions. Citing Mr. Chen, the report said “the emissions created by those living and producing in the city far exceed what the environment can take.”

Air pollution in Beijing reached record levels in January as the capital city battled a winter “airpocalypse” that one Chinese public health expert called worse than SARS. Several recent studies have linked pollution to birth defects and premature deaths in China, and the country’s new leaders have declared “ecological progress” a priority even though bureaucratic infighting has threatened to complicate any potential solutions.

Chris Luo of The South China Morning Post has more on Chen’s comments:

He made the remarks on Tuesday on radio after listeners asked why smog had become so bad in Beijing. Public concern about air pollution remains high in the capital after it was frequently shrouded in thick smog earlier this year.

In a document dubbed “Cleaning Air Operation Plan 2013” made public last month, Beijing authorities vowed to lower major air pollutants by 2 per cent this year. To reach this goal, the city announced 52 measures including phasing out about 180,000 vehicles with high emission levels and growing more than 58,000 acres of forest around Beijing.

Chen admitted climate and geological factors had contributed to the “relatively poor air quality”. But he said a major problem was also soaring vehicle emissions and high daily emissions in urban areas.

Phillip Bump of the Atlantic Wire has more on the implications of air pollution in Beijing and beyond:

One of the primary ways in which air pollution kills is the presence of small particles, generally released from burning fossil fuels and other industrial activity. The Lung Association explains how particulate matter kills. The particles are generally measures in two sizes: those smaller than ten microns in diameter and those smaller than 2.5 microns — far, far smaller than the width of a human hair. “Particle pollution,” the Association writes, “can be very dangerous to breathe. Breathing particle pollution may trigger illness, hospitalization and premature death, risks showing up in new studies that validate earlier research.”

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The data on which the analysis is based was first presented in the ambitious 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study, which was published in December in The Lancet, a British medical journal. The authors decided to break out numbers for specific countries and present the findings at international conferences. The China statistics were offered at a forum in Beijing on Sunday.

“We have been rolling out the India- and China-specific numbers, as they speak more directly to national leaders than regional numbers,” said Robert O’Keefe, the vice president of the Health Effects Institute, a research organization that is helping to present the study. The organization is partly financed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the global motor vehicle industry.

What the researchers called “ambient particulate matter pollution” was the fourth-leading risk factor for deaths in China in 2010, behind dietary risks, high blood pressure and smoking. Air pollution ranked seventh on the worldwide list of risk factors, contributing to 3.2 million deaths in 2010.

Wong adds that premature death calculations are “politically threatening in the eyes of Chinese officials,” who have redacted related sections from previous reports. However the reports continue to add up. Several recent studies have also firmed up the link between pollution and birth defects in China.

Indeed, pollution has loomed larger as a threat to Communist Party legitimacy this year – air pollution in Beijing reached record levels in January and thousands of dead pigs were found floating in rivers near Shanghai in March, prompting concerns over water pollution. An aniline spill in Shanxi province in January also caused the contamination of the water supply in a handful of cities, underscoring the growing dangers of China’s polluted rivers.

While bureaucratic infighting may complicate the government’s push to address the problem, Beijing’s government announced last week that it would spend $16 billion over three years to improve sewage disposal, garbage treatment and air quality in the capital city. Still, structural roadblocks exist that may hamper the chances for serious reform. With state-owned enterprises among China’s biggest polluters, and local governments hesitant to do anything that would threaten growth, environmental protection continues to take a backseat to profits. Citing the case of Fujian-based state-owned mining giant Zijin Mining, Reuters details China’s “losing battle” against powerful state-owned polluters:

China has the laws, but its ability to enforce them is weak, especially in the face of giant firms that pour millions into otherwise bereft local government coffers. Critics say Beijing also lacks the will to tackle the problem.

…

Like many state-owned firms, Zijin is more than just an enterprise, and has benefited from a vast state support system giving it access to cheap credit and a blind eye when it comes to pollution. Its dominance of the local economy also means that many officials think that what’s good for Zijin is generally good for the community at large.

The situation is made worse by the fact that state firms like Zijin were carved out of mining bureaus and never quite lost their role as arms of the government, maintaining old relationships and channels of communication as well as running hospitals, schools or retirement homes. For many residents seeking to complain about pollution, it is often difficult to see where the company ends and the state begins.

“The problem tends to involve the capture of the government by various interests – these problems are exacerbated when the company actually is the government,” said Alex Wang, professor at Berkeley and an expert in China’s environmental legislation.

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Post tags: air pollution, CCP legitimacy, death, environmental degradation, pollution, reform, state-owned enterprises, water pollution
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Tong Zhu, now a Princeton Global Scholar, together with research partners at Peking University Health Science Center and the University of Texas at Austin, recently published results of a 10-year investigation of severe birth defects in one of China’s most polluted regions: coal-rich and coal-darkened Shanxi province. Specifically, the team was investigating the alarming frequency of congenital neural tube defects, in which portions of an infant’s brain, skull, or spine are missing or do not connect properly. Most babies born with this condition live only a few weeks.

In the U.S., for every 10,000 live births, there are 7.5 infants with neural tube defects. In Shanxi province, that number is 18 times higher: 140 infants. “We wanted to understand what’s really behind the problem,” says Tong, who previously worked at Peking University in Beijing. “We wanted to find out what chemicals caused this.”

Over a 10-year period, the researchers gathered placentas from 80 stillborn or newborn infants in Shanxi with the disorder. Based on their analysis, they confirmed that those infants had been exposed in utero to significant levels of pesticides, industrial solvents, and especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are released into the air when fossil fuels are burned. In Shanxi, abundant coal is used for power plants as well as for home cooking and heating. “We found higher concentrations [of the chemicals] in the placentas of infants with the birth defects” than in other infants, explains Tong, who says there is a “clear association” between the environment the mother is exposed to and birth outcomes. Their findings (pdf)appeared in the Aug. 2, 2011, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

See more on pollution via CDT, including how bureaucratic infighting is complicating the government’s ability to form policy to tackle the problem.

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Post tags: air pollution, birth defects, infant health, pollution, Shanxi, smog
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What the leaders neglect to say is that infighting within the government bureaucracy is one of the biggest obstacles to enacting stronger environmental policies. Even as some officials push for tighter restrictions on pollutants, state-owned enterprises — especially China’s oil and power companies — have been putting profits ahead of health in working to outflank new rules, according to government data and interviews with people involved in policy negotiations.

For instance, even though trucks and buses crisscrossing China are far worse for the environment than any other vehicles, the oil companies have delayed for years an improvement in the diesel fuel those vehicles burn. As a result, the sulfur levels of diesel in China are at least 23 times that of the United States. As for power companies, the three biggest ones in the country are all repeat violators of government restrictions on emissions from coal-burning plants; offending power plants are found across the country, from Inner Mongolia to the southwest metropolis of Chongqing.

The state-owned enterprises are given critical roles in policy-making on environmental standards. The committees that determine fuel standards, for example, are housed in the buildings of an oil company. Whether the enterprises can be forced to follow, rather than impede, environmental restrictions will be a critical test of the commitment of Mr. Li and Xi Jinping, the new party chief and president, to curbing the influence of vested interests in the economy.[...]

Also see CDT coverage of record levels of air pollution in Beijing this past winter, the 16,000+ dead pig carcasses found floating in rivers near Shanghai, or other examples of China’s environmental woes.

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Post tags: air pollution, bureaucracy, environment, environmental degradation, pollution, river pollution, water pollution
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The rules, jointly issued by five government bodies including the National Development and Reform Commission, would cut passenger cars’ average fuel consumption to 6.9 litres per 100 kilometers by 2015 and down further to 5.0 litres by 2020.

“That’s going to be tough for everyone, especially those small players as they will have to use more fuel-efficient engines and invest in hybrid technologies,” said Yale Zhang, director of Greater China vehicle forecasts at consultancy CSM Worldwide.

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Post tags: air pollution, auto industry, auto sales, automobile industry, cars, emissions standards
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China’s myriad plans to deal with pollution don’t look so promising. In a research note today, Deutsche Bank analysts gloomily conclude that, barring extreme reforms, Chinese coal consumption and increased car ownership will push pollution levels 70% higher by 2025.

Even if China’s economy slowed to 5% growth each year, its annual coal consumption would still rise to 6 billion tons (5.4 tonnes) by 2022, from the current 3.8 billion tons. Car ownership is expected to increase over the years to 400 million in 2030 from the current 90 million.

[...] For China to meet its goal of reducing particulate matter to 35 micrograms per cubic meter by 2030, China will need to implement aggressive measures, the bank says, like reducing pollutants from coal-fired plants, cutting the number of cars on the road, and massively building up public transportation. Even then, the air pollution level would still above the level deemed safe by the World Health Organization (25 micrograms per cubic meter).

Brad Plumer at The Washington Post looks to the United Kingdom in the 1950s as China’s precedent:

In particular, they argue that the United Kingdom went through an analogous structural shift in the 1950s after the “Great Smog” in London that killed 12,000 people. Britain had a similarly coal-dependent economy back then, but it managed to diversify its energy supply and clean up pollution without hurting growth:

So there’s precedent, albeit on a smaller scale. The big hurdles for China aren’t economic or technological, the authors say. They’re political. Until now, China’s policies to rein in pollution have largely been “piecemeal and uncoordinated.” That will have to change.

Not everyone’s completely convinced it will be so easy. Over at FT Alphaville, Kate Mackenzie is wary of the comparison with the United Kingdom. “I’d very much like this to be correct,” she notes, “but I fear that Deutsche’s projections are a little too reliant on China emerging from its present dependence on capital intensive growth and manufacturing, becoming a more advanced, services-based economy.”

At the same time, people are disappointed with the incompetence of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP). From Liu Jianqiang at ChinaDialogue:

In the first five years, there was no MEP, merely its predecessor the State Environmental Protection Agency. Despite its lowly status, SEPA had the courage to act, which was encouraging. But after promotion to ministerial status brought greater powers and boosted career prospects for its employees, there was little action of note.

Among SEPA’s actions were its “environmental storms” – its strikes against law-breaking companies, including the huge electricity giants. It also ordered regional planning restrictions, preventing law-breaking local governments from approving new projects until changes were made. It called a halt to an illegal project at the Old Summer Palace lake and held public hearings on the case, making it a case study for public participation and democratic decision-making. And it researched regulations on regional environmental impact assessments and a green GDP measure designed to solve over-reliance on financial GDP measures.

[...] But in the following five years there was virtually no sign of similar proactive measures. Instead, we saw half a decade of widespread disputes and protests over environmental interests. In 2011, the number ofenvironmental protests increased 120%. Last year brought demonstrations in Ningbo, Shifang and Qidong.

Large projects that ignore environmental and social impacts, as well as the public’s right to participate, are the root of social unrest. But the MEP seems to consider this none of its business. The public’s right to know and participate are key to resolving conflict. If the MEP had, over the last five years, enforced its rules on disclosure of information and public participation, some of these conflicts would have been avoided.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, Beijing environment, coal industry, coal power, environmental protests, environmental regulation, industrial pollution, Ministry of Environmental Protection, pollution
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The poor air quality, according to a leading Chinese public health expert, is worse than SARS because nobody can escape it. Research suggests that air pollution can “raise the risk of cardio-respiratory death by 2 to 3 percent for every increase of 10 micrograms per cubic meter of pollutants.” Only 1 percent of China’s 560 million urban residents breathe air considered safe by the European Union, according to a 2007 World Bank study. A report released by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection in November 2010 showed that “about a third of 113 cities failed to meet national air standards.” The 2012 Cancer Registry Annual Report revealed that lung cancer is top among all types of cancer in terms of the number of cases and deaths in China. Indeed, the number of lung cancer-caused mortality in China has increased by 465 percent in the past three decades. In Beijing, the number of lung cancer patients has increased by 60 percent in the last ten years. The rising incidence rate of lung cancer coincides with drastic reduction in the incidence rates of stomach cancer and cervical cancer, which is thought to be a result of improvements in public health standards.

For years, public health experts considered smoking the leading risk factor of lung cancer. Yet a recent report prepared by some prominent Chinese public health experts and economists did not find any significant change in China’s overall smoking rate over the last decade. A group of scientists analyzed historical records of aerosol particles and lung cancer incidence in Guangzhou and found that a dramatic increase in the occurrence of air pollution from 1954 to 2006 was followed by a large increase in the lung cancer incidence rate despite the drop in the overall smoking rate. It was found that 750,000 Chinese die prematurely each year, primarily because of air pollution in large cities. According to more recent estimates by Greenpeace and Peking University’s School of Public Health, exposure to PM2.5 contributed to more than 8,500 premature deaths in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Xi’an in 2012 alone.

Business Insider Adam Taylor reports that a Beijing journalist asked a question about air pollution that lasted longer than 3 minutes, and “saw her almost break down in tears numerous times,” yet the appeal received no response from the delegates to the NPC.

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Post tags: air pollution, airpocalypse, Beijing, environmental degradation, NPC 2013, SARS
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While the country’s new leaders have declared “ecological progress” will be a priority, analysts at a World Resources Institute-led press teleconference said China must deal with series of inter-linked challenges– economic prosperity, energy security, mitigating climate change and social unrest – to make environmental strides.

Even then, any changes probably won’t be seen until after 2015, when the country’s current five-year environmental plan ends, the analysts said.

“We’re not going to see any big change in 2013, because it is in the middle of China’s 12th five-year plan,” said Melanie Hart, a policy analyst for the Center for American Progress. Still, “the 2011 to 2015 plan is dedicated to move in a low carbon direction,” she said.

But following this winter’s “airpocolypse,” China’s new leaders have realized that resolving pollution is linked to their own legitimacy and survival. Der Spiegel reports:

The new leadership wants to transform China from a primarily agrarian and industrial country into a high-tech and service nation. At the same time, it intends to boost affluence and promote urbanization in order to come to grips with the country’s wealth disparity and population growth. If they achieve all of these goals, Xi and Li will leave behind a different China.

The challenge and the need to break with the past are especially evident in environmental policy. About 750,000 people die as a result of air pollution in China each year. Many of the country’s rivers are so polluted that authorities do not permit residents to even touch the water, not to mention use it to irrigate fields.

Fruit and grain grown in the country’s contaminated and over-fertilized soil contains massive amounts of pollutants. They also unsettle consumers in the West, who now import a large share of their tomatoes, apples and other food products from China.

Xi and Li now seem to have recognized just how serious this problem is. For months, they have invoked China’s “beautiful environment,” a phrase Xi used in his inaugural speech in November. “We must act,” says Li — and he clearly means it. Indeed, China’s environmental policy has developed into a question of national security — not because the government is particularly farsighted, but because its power is on the line.

At the National People’s Congress meetings, a journalist asked a panel of delegates how they personally would work to solve China’s environmental problems. Following a question that lasted almost three minutes and during which the journalist got quite emotional, the delegates offered no response. Liz Carter has provided English subtitles to the video:

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Post tags: air pollution, environmental degradation, NPC 2013, sustainable development
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