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China’s most-polluted province faces enormous challenge

Hebei, a northern region with the worst air in China, faces an enormous challenge in cleaning up its dirty air as data showed that little more than one third of all days last year met quality standards. The air quality index (AQI) in 129 days, 35.3 percent of days in 2013, was below 100, Chen Guoying, director of the Hebei provincial bureau of environmental protection, told a local legislature on Wednesday. The province, which surrounds the national capital Beijing, had 80 days, or 21.9 percent, of severe air pollution (AQI readings higher than 200), Chen said. According to statistics published monthly by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Hebei is home to up to seven of the country’s top 10 polluted cities. "Heavy smog hit at the time of the "two sessions" in 2013 and again this year," said Liu Ronghua, a local political advisor, […]

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Beijing to control vehicle pollution

Beijing will extend its air quality monitoring network with more stations and focus on vehicles with high emission, confirmed the city environmental authority Friday. These stations will be along the fifth and sixth ring roads and other highways heading into the urban areas, the main routes of heavy diesel vehicles, said Zhang Dawei, director of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center. Heavy diesel vehicles only comprise about five percent of Beijing’s traffic but spew out about fifty percent of the city’s nitric oxide. The new stations will help environmental authorities understand high emission vehicle pollution, said Zhang. Beijing has 35 air monitoring stations measuring the city’s six main pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, PM10 and PM2.5. Beijing reported 58 days of heavy pollution last year, compared with 176 days of excellent or fairly good air. Related: Beijing PM 2.5 reading fails national standard BEIJING, Jan. […]

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China’s Tianjin to begin restricting car population, Xinhua says

China’s northern Tianjin municipality will begin restricting its car population next year to control traffic congestion and air pollution, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Only 100,000 new license plates will be issued in Tianjin next year, of which 60,000 will be distributed by lottery and the rest auctioned off for a minimum bid of ¥10,000 (RM5410) each, according to Xinhua. Government departments will be banned from buying new official cars and all proceeds from the auctions will go to support public transportation, Xinhua reported, citing a plan approved by the Tianjin government. The city of 14 million, located about 111 kilometres (69 miles) from Beijing, follows the capital, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Guiyang in imposing vehicle quotas. […]

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Agriculture Land Shrinking in China; World Bank Provides Loans to Reduce Soil Pollution

Growing population, industrialization and rapid economic growth are putting unprecedented pressure on China’s agriculture resources, and have become a threat to food security in the country and the world. According to China’s national land survey figures released recently, total arable land in the country stood at around 135.4 million hectares at the end of 2012. This is still about 15.4 million hectares above the “red line” of a minimum 120 million hectares earmarked to ensure food security in China. However, pollution of land and water are eroding agriculture land in China. Coupled with increasing population, China’s per capita arable area now stands at around 0.1 hectare, almost half of the global average of around 0.2 hectare. According to government officials in China, it was found from the survey that about 3 million hectares of land is now unsuitable for rice cultivation due to heavy contamination by poisonous heavy metals […]

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Democrats want hearing on methane emissions

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 (UPI) — Two Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives said they wanted to hold hearings to assess methane emissions from the oil and natural gas sector. U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman , D-Calif., and Bobby Rush , D-Ill., members of House committees on energy, issued a letter to their Republican counterparts calling for hearings to assess the level of methane emitted during production, processing and distribution of hydrocarbons. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, trapping more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Waxman and Rush said carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were decreasing because U.S. utility companies were switching from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas. Methane, however, may be an unfortunate consequence of natural gas production in particular, they wrote. "The rate at which methane leaks into the atmosphere from natural gas production is a critical question that we must answer," they said […]

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Executive Moving to Shanghai Finds No Escape From China’s Smog

Bill Russo moved more than 700 miles from Beijing to Shanghai on Dec. 1 and thought he’d left the smog behind him. Five days later, he was wheezing again. “What was shocking was how bad it’s been,” said Russo, a vice president at car stereo maker Harman International Industries Inc. “Shanghai over the years had a reputation of being better,” said the executive, who had some of the fine-particle masks he left behind in Beijing sent to him. Record levels of pollution this month busted perceptions of Shanghai as a place to escape the smog that’s shrouded Beijing and other parts of China. Worsening air quality in the country’s commercial hub prompted warnings to keep children indoors, spurred companies from Unilever to Uniqlo owner Fast Retailing Co. to give workers face masks, and may hinder Shanghai’s push to be a global financial center by 2020. “I […]

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China’s Rust Belt Cities Hit With New Air Pollution Fines

A province in the heart of China’s rust belt has levied air pollution fines on city governments for the first time, in a sign that pressure to improve air quality in the world’s second-largest economy is trickling down to the local level. An electronic screen shines amid heavy smog in Shenyang on October 28. Reuters Liaoning, one of the nation’s largest industrial hubs, has so far collected a total of 54.2 million yuan ($8.9 million) from eight of its cities after it passed tougher air-pollution regulations last year, the official Xinhua news agency reported Monday. The fines are the first of their kind for the province and also come after China’s central government released a nationwide reform blueprint last month that vowed to impose more fees and taxes on polluters . Although China is test piloting anti-pollution measures such as carbon trading, it has been hesitant to announce nationwide […]

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Breathe in that dirty doublethink

Shanghai’s solution to the ‘airpocalypse’: ‘adjust’ the pollution standard, says Patti Waldmeir ©Reuters Clogged: a rush-hour traffic jam on a Shanghai highway Last year, Shanghai’s favourite winter sport was checking the air pollution readings in Beijing and gloating over how high they were. That’s not so much fun this year. In the past week Shanghai has wracked up its worst pollution since records began, with the concentration of deadly PM2.5 fine particles topping 600 micrograms per cubic metre on Friday afternoon, at a time when Beijing’s level was half that. (The World Health Organisation’s safe level is 25 µg/m 3 as a daily mean.) The Shanghai government has the perfect solution to the current “airpocalypse”: it “adjusted” the city’s pollution standard so that it would trigger fewer hazard warnings. What a relief, it was so annoying constantly being warned about the deadly assault on my lungs. Now my lungs […]

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Obama Pollution Rule Revival Weighed by Supreme Court

U.S. Supreme Court justices hinted they might revive one of President Barack Obama ’s biggest air-quality efforts, a rule that would curb emissions from coal-fired power plants in 28 states. In a 90-minute argument session today featuring analogies to last-second shots in close basketball games, the justices questioned contentions made by challengers to the Environmental Protection Agency rule, which targets air pollution that crosses state lines. The rule — struck down by a lower court and being tested by power companies, states and miners — has never taken effect. It would force companies including Texas ’s largest power producer, Energy Future Holdings Corp.’s Luminant, to either shutter old plants or invest billions of dollars in pollution-control technology. The administration says the rule would prevent as many as 34,000 premature deaths a year. The rule would use a modified cap-and-trade system to limit emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide […]

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Parents push schools to install air purifiers

With Shanghai suffering one of its worst bouts of pollution, concerned parents, worried about their children’s health, are urging schools to install air purifiers in classrooms. Parents said the purifiers are necessary after Shanghai’s pollution hit a record high with both the air quality index and PM2.5 density soaring to new highs since last Thursday. Weihai and Fortune kindergartens, Soong Ching Ling School and Shanghai United International School have already installed air purifiers in some of their classrooms. Jiang Yayun, the mother of a two-year-old child, said her daughter has been coughing for two months and doctors had told her it was due to pollution. Jiang and other parents with similar problems then approached the principal of Fortune Kindergarten and urged the school to buy air purifiers, which they think is better than having doing nothing at all. “Not many of us […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple